The announcement came shortly after the Senate’s admissions board said it was pulling back on its original timeline to have two working groups — one to consider resurrecting the exams and the other to review high school course requirements for UC admission — through next year. That news, , caused confusion and doubt over how and when the admissions test question would be addressed.

Regents Chair Maria Anguiano settled that issue at Tuesday’s board meeting after a vast majority of public speakers voiced strong support for reinstituting the SAT and ACT.  

“As stewards of this institution, we need to ask a broader and more consequential set of questions,” she said of the admissions process. “What knowledge, skills and experiences best prepare students for success at UC and beyond? We have a responsibility to continually examine whether our understanding of college readiness keeps pace with the changing world around us.”

And, just as important, she said, the system needs to work with educators, families and communities across the state to strengthen students’ academic preparedness. 

“The goal of this review is not to rehash old questions or data, but an opportunity to take a fresh look at how we define and evaluate college readiness in a rapidly changing world,” she said. “We anticipate a recommendation from the Academic Senate no later than the end of this academic year.”

Much of the enthusiasm about reinstating the SAT and ACT as a screening tool came from faculty: They’ve been waging a growing campaign to bring back the exams to screen out what they say are underqualified first-year students.

The idea arose in part because of incoming freshmen’s abysmal performance in math. Between 2020 and 2025, for example, the number of students at the University of California San Diego whose math skills fell short of high school standards increased nearly thirtyfold — and 70% of those students were below

Reading and writing has suffered mightily, too, in recent years, faculty note. 

But some K-12 educators and advocates in the Golden State are skeptical of the idea, saying it will only widen the opportunity gap for students and would fail to address the real and solvable problems in K-12 education — particularly around teacher readiness.  

“That exam will be a gatekeeper, punishing the most under-resourced districts, schools and communities,” said Rodolfo Ornelas, whose position as STEM coordinator at Oakland Unified School District was recently eliminated because of budget cuts. “Districts like Oakland Unified serve some of our most vulnerable populations and attract teachers who are newer in their career or are on a number of emergency credentials.”

Ornelas will soon start a job at San Francisco Unified School District where he will coach new principals. He said one of the most fundamental problems with math instruction is that many educators don’t know how to teach the subject effectively. 

“A lot of times, they lack that content knowledge and the confidence to even teach mathematics, so they teach it the way they learned it and so that’s where we see our kids getting shortchanged,” Ornelas said. “Or you see these districts typically prioritizing literacy without realizing math needs to be an equal partner.”  

Educators point to COVID-related learning loss, chronic absenteeism and the corrosive nature of social media as other factors that play into college students’ poor math performance. They say the university system must work closely with K-12 schools to help ensure students have the skills they need. 

Andrea McChristian, national policy director for Just Equations, a California-based math equity group, said the use of the SATs and ACTs in admissions runs against the university system’s stated goals. 

“Their core mission and admissions policy says that they’re supposed to be representative of the student population in the state,” she said. “So, if you’re saying that as a public institution you want to represent the diversity of student voices and student experience in the state, yet you’re putting in this screener in the admissions process — which has been shown to lessen and suppress that very diversity that you want to have within your class — then something’s not adding up there.”

After the regents meeting, Just Equations Executive Director Pamela Burdman called for greater transparency in the process moving forward and questioned the fast-moving events of the last few days.

“The abandonment of the originally announced plan came on the eve of today’s regents meeting — in which the public had its first opportunity to comment on the idea of reinstating admissions tests — and amid intense pressure from a group of faculty demanding that the regents take an immediate vote, with no time to inquire into the evidence,” she said. 

The university system stopped requiring the SAT or ACT in 2020 and then , said the tests could not be used at all in admissions as part of a settlement to brought by four students, six nonprofits and the Compton Unified School District. The 2019 complaint charged that the UC system knowingly created barriers to higher education for students of color and those with disabilities by relying on the SAT and the ACT.

Around the same time, Gov. Gavin Newsom expressed strong reservations about the exams, saying their use “ for underrepresented students, given that performance on these tests is highly correlated with race and parental income, and is not the best predictor for college success.” His office did not respond to requests for comments. 

But those working within the nine-school, student university system disagree: more than 3,000 faculty members last month imploring school leadership to bring back the tests. 

The first, signed by 2,300 people, called for the admissions exams to be reinstated for incoming students applying to STEM majors. 

“We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must re-teach middle school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other qualitatively demanding fields,” the STEM faculty . “UC has finite resources and can only help so many students, and only when the preparation deficits they need to overcome are within reach.”  

The signed by 900 faculty members in social sciences, humanities, arts, business, law, education and other non-STEM fields, said the SAT’s and ACT’s reading and writing sections were also critically needed indicators. 

The university system is also considering using the state-level exams — annual math and English tests taken by high school juniors — in admissions, but there are complicating factors with that alternative, including that not every out-of-state applicant takes the test.

Josh Godinez is an assistant high school principal in Southern California and board director for the nearly 2,000-member California Association of School Counselors.

He said he knows socioeconomic status, access to educational resources, mental health and test anxiety can all impact a student’s performance on high-stakes exams like the SAT and ACT.  But he still believes standardized tests should be a component of what he called a “holistic” admissions review, adding these exams “provide colleges and universities with a valuable snapshot of a student’s current academic proficiency that complements transcripts, coursework, and other measures of achievement.”

The push to bring back the college entrance exams began at UC Berkeley, about eight miles north of the Oakland Unified School District. Lakisha Young, whose organization The Oakland REACH builds and delivers family-centered learning solutions in partnership with school systems, said the parents of the students who performed poorly in math at the college level surely would have wanted to know their kids were missing key benchmarks in earlier years. 

Report cards might not have revealed the depth of their problems with the subject, she said. 

“Grades don’t tell the story about competence,” Young said. “If a parent looks at a report card and sees Bs and C pluses, how are they supposed to make that connection? A ‘C’ is at least average. I think a parent would be floored about that, thinking, ‘My child has been moving through the system still stuck at a 6th- or 7th-grade math level.’”

Proponents of returning the admissions tests say they are better measures of how well students will do in college than their high school grades. They argue, too, the exams are a more equitable method of identifying high-performing students from marginal backgrounds than other, more subjective criteria, such as exceptional extracurriculars.

Liz Noone, an instructional coach who helps math teachers inside Oakland USD, is conflicted about bringing back the tests but sees some value in the move because they would allow her students — and her school — to learn how they compare to others. 

“People who are in a better socioeconomic position get tutors, they do classes, they get books, they get practice, they do this and that, where our students who are from lower socioeconomic status don’t have access to all those resources and support,” she said. “So, it’s a double-edged sword.”

Dave Kung, executive director of TPSE Math, a professional organization that works to better serve students in higher education mathematics, said the original decision to pull the entrance tests was based on an observed inequality — but was not a solution to the underlying problem. 

“We saw an injustice — big equity gaps on SATs, especially for students of color — and tried to act like that wasn’t the result of deeper issues: poverty, generational wealth, the echoes of educational exclusion,” he said. “Instead, we thought ignoring it might make it go away, or at least diminish the problem. That was clearly overly optimistic thinking.”

Launched in 1967 by the College Board, the nonprofit that also administers Advanced Placement exams, CLEP provides a highly-accessible pathway toward gaining college credits and reducing the time and cost of earning a degree. Yet, it is largely unknown to most American high school students, who are more familiar with AP exams tied to high school-based courses that can also lead to college credit. 

Cruz’s school had limited AP options, so she took CLEP exams throughout high school with the plan of transferring her college credits to a local university, East Tennessee State, and completing a bachelor’s degree quickly and at a much lower cost. Then, her plans changed. “I found out I got into Harvard, and they gave me really amazing financial aid,” said Cruz, who plans to major in human developmental and regenerative biology. “I think having the CLEP exams on my resume showed that I had initiative.”

Unlike AP exams, which are typically tied to semester- or year-long high school courses and are administered only once each year, CLEP exams aren’t connected to a specific course and can be taken any time at a local testing center or online through remote-proctoring. This flexibility was also a flaw: CLEP was an exam without a course.

“That’s when the light went on,” said New York philanthropist and private equity executive, Steve Klinsky. He founded the in 2017 to offer free, online courses connected to CLEP exam content, as well as to provide testing fee waivers to expand access. “CLEP exams have been around since the Vietnam War, but everyone had forgotten about them. We reverse-engineered to create the courses for the exams,” he said, adding that it seemed like such a simple and straightforward solution to helping address the college access and affordability challenge. “It was so obvious that I felt duty-bound to do it,” he said.

Klinsky has been passionate about education since the early 1990s, when he launched an afterschool program in New York City named after his late brother. He then went on to create the first public charter school in Harlem in 1999, before starting New Mountain Capital, a private equity firm that today has $60 billion in assets under management. 

In the 2010s, Klinsky was intrigued by the rapid rise of massive open online courses or MOOCs that enabled anyone to take free courses, often taught by top professors and subject-matter experts. He appreciated the decentralization of knowledge but felt that MOOCs were missing a key element: course credit. At the same time, he saw that CLEP exams offered credit for content knowledge but without courses. Modern States was built to bridge that gap.

Over the past nine years, some 800,000 students have taken free courses through Modern States in preparation for CLEP exams, which range from 90 to 120 minutes in length. A passing score can lead to course credit at nearly 3,000 colleges and universities, from community colleges to state flagships. For Harvard-bound Cruz, Modern States was especially beneficial. She estimates that about one-third of her college credits came through CLEP.

I first heard about CLEP and Modern States two years ago when my older daughter took the Calculus CLEP exam at Bunker Hill Community College here in Boston, Massachusetts. She was a homeschooled high schooler at the time, taking dual enrollment courses through the community college. Modern States was the resource she used to review material for the CLEP exam, which enabled her to place into Calculus III and an advanced physics course. Those course credits transferred easily to the four-year university she attends, where she is now a pure math major.

Prior to Modern States there were not many options for course preparation or help in covering the $97 exam cost, plus additional testing center fees. These constraints limited the number of students who knew about the exams. Some homeschoolers and other nontraditional students took advantage of CLEP, as did U.S. military personnel who can receive exam fee waivers through the federal government. But it wasn’t a widely-known tool for acquiring course credit to save on tuition costs. 

At Bunker Hill, CLEP is touted as an opportunity to gain credit for content that students already know, with links to Modern States’s free courses and exam fee waivers featured prominently on the college’s website. Adult learners who may be returning to college or entering later in life find the exams particularly valuable, as do native French-, Spanish-, or German-speaking students, who gain credit for their language proficiency. “Community colleges in general can’t wait to save their students time and money,” said Danielle Tabela, Bunker Hill’s director of testing services and assessment.

Klinsky can’t wait either. He sees CLEP and free Modern States courses as a means to make college more affordable for more students “This is a paradigm for the way to really reduce the cost of higher or vocational education,” he said, explaining that he would like to see free online courses created for anything that has a credit-bearing exam as an endpoint, whether it’s for college or career.

“If Abe Lincoln was reincarnated — with no money, just brains and ambition — this is how he would get one year of college paid for, maybe two,” he said. “All you need is access to the internet.” Klinsky and his team at Modern States are eager to see this paradigm for course credit expand, including helping more high school students and their families access CLEP exams. 

He also hopes that more organizations, employers and government agencies that care about expanding access to post-secondary education and reducing the costs of college will recognize the opportunity that Modern States has found, while exploring similar strategies beyond CLEP. 

“My family is very proud to support this at a full level for many years, but ultimately free courses and exams is a method that could save money and help lots of people,” said Klinsky.

When a patient at Los Angeles General Medical Center experienced a medical emergency, Brandon Maldonado grabbed an intercom and called a “code blue” to bring immediate help from emergency hospital staff. 

The Bravo Medical Magnet High School senior had trained for such emergencies through Los Angeles Unified’s patient care pathway — one of several career education programs a new study found improves students’ college readiness.

“That experience stuck with me because it taught me how to stay calm under pressure, and I didn’t panic,” Brandon said. “I knew what to do.”

A new  from research institute SRI International found promising results for students in Los Angeles Unified who completed career and technical education pathways — especially those that combine academics with workplace experience. These students not only graduated at higher rates, but were also more likely to complete college preparatory curriculum and enroll in college than their peers. 

California has significantly expanded career and technical education in recent years, with a combined  in funding each year and an additional  approved for new CTE school facilities in 2025. 

Miya Warner, lead author of the report, said the findings puncture the longstanding perception that career and technical education is mostly geared toward students who have no plans to go to college. 

“The findings combat some of those lingering stereotypes around CTE and who it’s for,” Warner said.

In the state’s largest school district, with more than 165,000 LAUSD high school students as of the 2021-2022 school year, the investments in career tech programs appear to provide students a leg up after they graduate from high school. These programs include 265 traditional CTE pathways and 72 Linked Learning pathways — which combine technical training with college preparatory coursework — across 15 industry sectors. 

Nearly two-thirds of students took at least one CTE course, but the report found higher positive outcomes among about a fifth of all students who completed a full CTE or Linked Learning pathway. 

“The more the word can get out about the value of completion versus just a one-off course, the more that all the staff at the school can support students in meeting that goal,” Warner said. “I visited schools where counselors are putting seniors into the first year of a CTE sequence, and they can’t complete it.”

At Bravo Medical Magnet High, students begin taking medical prerequisite courses as sophomores before choosing a pathway in sports medicine or patient care. Brandon, now a senior, has gained hands-on experience in the ophthalmology department, the volunteer center and the infusion clinic at Los Angeles General Medical Center, which partners with the magnet school. 

“I wanted to get real-world experience and get an overview of different departments; that way I can know which field I want to go into,” Brandon said. “’The value of getting the early exposure stage is you’re not just thrown out there. The (program) gives you the basic skill of how to respond.” 

Ben Gertner, director of Linked Learning at LAUSD, said the district has raised CTE pathway completion rates from about 18% to nearly 25% between 2022 and 2025 and increased the number of Linked Learning pathways from 43 to 100. 

“We want to ensure that we focus on developing school-site capacity,” Gertner said. “We also help schools to balance competing priorities, increase graduation rate and college and career readiness.”

Access is a key hurdle for students trying to start and complete CTE pathways. The report found that students with the highest and lowest academic performance took fewer CTE courses than students in the middle, suggesting that AP classes or credit recovery can create scheduling conflicts. Although incoming freshmen had access to an average of nine pathways, many did not learn about them early enough to enroll. 

Warner emphasized that starting a CTE program early helps students build transferable skills, professional networks and gain hands-on experience.

One theater pathway student interested in becoming a lawyer, she said, gained confidence in communication and collaboration skills. Another student in patient care realized a healthcare career was not the right fit for him.

“How much better to figure that out in high school than wait, going into debt in a program that turns out is not actually a good fit for you,” Warner said. “It’s better to have those experiences early.”

Linked Learning shows better outcomes

The report found stronger outcomes for students in Linked Learning pathways, which combine work-based training and academic instruction, than in traditional CTE pathways, which offer standalone technical skills courses. 

High school graduates who completed a certified Linked Learning pathway were about 16% more likely to finish college preparatory courses and 24% more likely to enroll in college than those who did not take any CTE courses. 

“In the Linked Learning pathways, we saw a little bit more integration of those work-based learning experiences into the curriculum,” Warner said, adding that students are also more engaged with experiences in real workplaces. 

Karen Benavides, a senior in the patient care pathway at Bravo Medical Magnet High, recalled stepping in to help in the surgical intensive care unit during a hospital staff shortage. 

“I got to help a patient, help the nurses. I took phone calls, and it was just a very immersive experience,” Karen said. “I didn’t stop for a second, and I really liked the rush.”

Karen, who plans to become a physician assistant, said she has become more confident communicating with peers, teachers and patients, especially with those who may be uncooperative. 

“I also feel like it’s helped improve my teamwork and being able to think critically, go through situations and see what the best course of action is,” Karen said. 

About half of the students in certified Linked Learning pathways completed their programs, while about a quarter completed traditional CTE pathways, according to the report. Students at a “higher-need” middle school also had greater access to Linked Learning pathways but fewer traditional CTE options than students at “lower-need” schools.

Suzanne Bogue, a teacher in the patient care pathway at Bravo Medical Magnet High, said strong teacher collaboration distinguishes Linked Learning from traditional CTE.  

“The junior year teachers and the senior year teachers, we all work together and help each other target the students that might need a little more support,” Bogue said. 

Schools can opt into Linked Learning with a 75% faculty vote in favor of onboarding at LAUSD, which has “led to more of a sense of commitment to the Linked Learning approach,” Gertner said. 

Brandon said he plans to attend UC Riverside to study biology and hopes to become an anesthesiologist after shadowing one through the program.  

“One of the valuable skills I’ve learned is teamwork,” Brandon said. “It just gives you that exposure to being able to talk to people you’ve never really talked to before.”

This was originally published on .

In the 2020-21 academic year, just 4.4% of charter school students with disabilities and 2.8% of those in traditional schools took Advanced Placement classes, versus 21% and 15% of general education students, respectively. 

Just 2.6% of charter school special education students and 3.4% of those in district-run schools took dual-enrollment college and university courses, versus 11.5% and 8% of their general education classmates. 

The number of youth with disabilities taking college admissions tests was less than 10% in district-run schools — half the rate of general education students. Almost 9% of special education students in charter schools took the ACT or SAT, compared with 13% of their non-disabled peers.

Researchers cautioned that those rates were likely impacted by COVID-related school closures and an increase in the number of colleges making the assessments optional. But they noted that the disparity has persisted since 2012.

“The bottom line is that the overall percentages are just unacceptable,” says Jennifer Coco, the center’s senior director of strategy and impact. “The research shows that 85% of students in special education are capable of achieving on grade level. There’s no barrier that’s stopping them if their needs are met.”

The report is the center’s fifth analysis of charter and district school enrollment of students with disabilities, based on the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection, which documents educational disparities. Analyzing recently released data from the 2020-21 school year, the new report is the first to look specifically at access to career- and college-readiness opportunities.

“In our minds, it’s a clear call to action,” says Coco. 

The center was launched in 2013 as the National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools, with a focus on improving conditions for children with disabilities in the charter sector. Though gaps have narrowed, charter schools have long enrolled fewer students who qualify for special education and are often ill-equipped to serve those with the most profound challenges. 

Charter schools were conceived in part as places where educators could innovate, and the most effective have refined approaches that create better outcomes for low-income children and students of color. But to date, except for a handful of schools, they have not identified better special education practices. 

The proportion of rose from 10.7% in 2018 to 11.5% in 2021, an increase of 87,444 children. During the same period, the number of students in traditional district schools who have Individualized Education Plan, the legal documents that spell out how their needs will be addressed, rose from 13.2% to slightly more than 14%. 

The disparity in enrollment between charter and traditional schools is almost entirely in elementary and middle schools; high schools in both sectors serve special education students at roughly the same rate. Charter schools are much more likely to serve disabled children , a practice that increases achievement for special education students. 

“85% of students in special education are capable of achieving on grade level. There’s no barrier that’s stopping them if their needs are met.”

The report notes 83% of charter school special education students spend more than 80% of their day in a regular classroom, compared with 67.5% in traditional schools. Just 1.3% of children with disabilities participate in gifted and talented programs in district schools, compared with 6.4% of all students. In charter schools, 0.6% of disabled pupils participate in gifted programs, compared with 2.4% of the general student body. 

In the 2019-20 academic year, some , according to the National Center for Education Statistics. They are less likely than non-disabled college students to attain a degree, however, raising concerns about making sure they graduate high school prepared for higher education.

In 2023, the for disabled students attending four-year colleges was 49.5%, compared with 68% of non-disabled students. Just 37% report their disability to their college, and of those who do, many don’t receive accommodations. A bill before Congress, the , would require colleges to make it easier for students to get disability supports.

Finally, the center took at 176 charter schools that have a specific focus on students with disabilities, especially those with autism, emotional disturbances and intellectual disabilities. More than half of these schools are located in Florida, Ohio and Texas. Further study is needed to understand why families choose these segregated schools and how student services may differ from those provided in district-run classrooms.

At a Wednesday meeting of Maryland Higher Education Commission, officials discussed how the implementation of Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, an education overhaul passed by the 2021 Maryland General Assembly, may drastically change how students are assessed for college and career readiness, among other topics.

Emily Dow, assistant secretary of Academic Affairs provided updates on where MHEC stands in the implementation of the Blueprint, which includes goals of increasing access to higher education and career training as well as supporting the education of future public school teachers.

The Blueprint requires that education-focused state agencies to submit a plan for implementation, which MHEC submitted in March. The plan includes providing a teaching fellows scholarship and loan assistance programs for public school teachers.

The Blueprint also prompts MHEC to work alongside other state and local education agencies to create alternative teacher certification pathways and college readiness standards.

Part of Wednesday’s discussion focused on how to 

The Blueprint’s Accountability & Implementation Board proposed new standards that would measure a student’s college and career readiness. If students have a grade point average of at least 3.0 and a passing grade in algebra 1 by the end of 10th grade, they would meet the standard.

If a student did not reach those criteria, they could still demonstrate proficiency and readiness through standardized testing like the MCAP assessments. If a student struggles to pass those exams, they would receive additional services to reach those metrics by the end of high school.

But Commissioner Chike Aguh raised a concern that the current proposed metrics mostly focus on whether a child is “college ready” but may not adequately determine if a student is “career ready.”

“Usually when we talk about CCR, college and career standards, we end up talking about college readiness. We generally hear very little about career readiness,” Aguh said.

Dow responded that she was not quite sure.

“At least in the meetings with AIB (Accountability and Implementation Board), it is on their radar. I do not know how that is getting addressed with specificity…But just know that there have been opportunities, when it is appropriate, to speak up and say ‘let’s recognize that these are academic metrics that are designed for academic outcomes.’ And you are absolutely right that we are missing a piece to this definition, to this this concept of college and career readiness.”

The committee also discussed some challenges for students transferring from a community college to a four-year institution.

“A student starts off at a community college, and they transfer to a four-year institution, with or without an associates degree… and the four-year institution may say ‘yes, some of your courses can transfer, but some of your courses can’t. And you’re going to have to retake something slightly different because it’s not exactly what we want.’ And then the sending institution would never be the wiser … that they have designed a course that is not transferring or is not well aligned for a student to be successful at a four-year institution,” Dow said.

In 2021, the General Assembly passed the Transfer with Success Act attempting to resolve that issue, and MHEC is still working on implementation of an overhaul on the credit transfer process.

Maryland’s institutions of higher education submitted implementation plans in January describing how they were going to improve credit transfers among institutions.

Dow noted that the plans varied. Some institutions said they were going to focus on improving credit transfers between their immediate partnering institutions, while other indicated that they were going to focus on credit transfers for their most popular majors that receive transfer students.

Maryland Matters is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Danielle Gaines for questions: dgaines@marylandmatters.org. Follow Maryland Matters on  and .

The average ACT test score was 19.5 out of 36 from the class of 2023, compared to 19.8 last year — the sixth consecutive drop, according to the nonprofit organization that administers the test.

New shows Black students scored 3.5 points below this year’s average, continuing the growing trend of historically marginalized students being unprepared for college-level courses.

“These systemic problems require sustained action and support at the policy level,” said ACT chief executive officer Janet Godwin in a . 

“The hard truth is that we are not doing enough to ensure that graduates are truly ready for postsecondary success in college and career,” she added.

Here are four key takeaways from the :

1. Black students had the lowest ACT test scores in nearly every category.

Black students had an overall ACT test score of 16 out of 36.

In English, Black students were more than three points below the average scores of 18.6 for English, 19 for math, 20.1 for reading and 19.6 for science.

American Indian and Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander and Latino students also scored below average in every category.

Stephen Barker, director of communications at , said the scores point to the systemic barriers minority and first-generation students face as they apply to college.

“There isn’t the generational support or knowledge to push kids and prepare them to take these tests,” Barker said. “Kids are throwing their hands in the air and saying ‘I’m gonna take it but I’m not ready’ and it’s stressful for them and bears out in these numbers.”

2. Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students experienced the greatest ACT test score declines in the last five years.

Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students saw the largest overall ACT test score decline in the last five years, scoring 16.3 out of 36 — a 1.6 point decrease compared to 2019.

The decline was followed by Latino and white students who decreased 1.3 and 1.1 points, respectively.

“What you don’t see in these numbers are all of the environmental challenges that are stacked on,” Barker said, adding how students, often women, are caretaking for families or working multiple jobs.

“We’re just throwing tests at kids and are surprised when it comes time to enroll them and they aren’t ready,” he said.

3. Male students scored higher in math and science compared to females.

Male students scored 19.4 in math and 19.8 in science compared to female students scoring 18.8 and 19.6, respectively — a difference of 0.6 and 0.2 points.

Female students scored 19.2 in English and 20.6 in reading compared to male students scoring 18.2 and 19.7 — a difference of 1 and 0.9 points.

“I can tell you that I definitely see this disparity,” Medha Kukkalli, a first-year student at the University of Houston, told ����Ӱ��.

Kukkalli, who’s currently studying human development and family studies, said most of her classmates are women and her peers in STEM courses are predominantly men. 

4. Fewer students have taken the ACT test in the last five years.

Nearly 1.4 million students took the ACT test compared to last year — an increase of 40,000 students.

But there’s been a dramatic decline from the nearly 1.8 million students who took the test in 2019 — a decrease of about 400,000 students.

This comes as several universities have made standardized admissions tests optional, including the that doesn’t even consider ACT or SAT scores.

Kukkalli opted out of taking the ACT test because she said it wouldn’t reflect how successful she could be in college.

“It’s more about time management skills, having resilience, support systems and mental fortitude rather than solely whether you have a high ACT score,” Kukkalli said.

Barker said Kukkalli’s thinking is not surprising as the ACT and SAT tests experience a “brand crisis,” with the number of students taking standardized tests declining.

Rhode Island is phasing in new standards for high school graduation after a multi-year evaluation revealed that nearly half of graduates were not meeting the minimum criteria for entry into the state’s public colleges and universities.

The class of 2028 — current seventh graders — will be required to take at least two years of a world language and complete math courses in geometry and Algebra II in order to earn their diploma. Seniors will also graduate having written professional resumes and completed the federal college financial aid form, known as FAFSA, a first nationwide, Rhode Island officials say. (Some other states have also made FAFSA a graduation requirement but offer students alternatives, such as filling out a state-level financial aid application instead or seeking an opt-out.) At the same time, Rhode Island will support high schools to add offerings in computer science, civics and financial literacy.

The new regulations also add flexibility for students who work jobs or are caregivers to receive credit for their real-world learning experiences. The changes will eliminate seat time in the classroom from being a criteria used to award academic credit, placing the emphasis instead on subject mastery and student proficiency.

The State Council on Elementary and Secondary Education the new standards in November and officials are now beginning implementation.

“This is going to be a gamechanger for us across the state,” Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green said.

The shift comes after the Rhode Island Department of Education partnered with the XQ Institute in 2020 to audit how well its high schools were preparing their students for success in college and careers. Researchers at the nonprofit analyzed more than 4,800 surveys and over 2,250 transcripts from a representative sample of students, finding that high schools were falling short on preparing their graduates for college and careers. They provided their work at no cost to the state.

While about 80% of students said they wanted to attend college, just 60% enrolled in the courses necessary to be eligible for higher education and only about 50% passed those classes.

“It was just really shocking to see the number of students that didn’t meet this bar of college eligibility,” said Keith Dysarz, who led the XQ analysis. 

Low-income students, English learners and students with disabilities saw even wider gaps, with the first two groups completing college prep coursework 42% of the time while the latter hit that mark in just 12% of cases.

In many cases, high schoolers would sign up for classes and have no idea that their selections could disqualify them from access to higher education, Infante-Green explained.

“Kids didn’t even know that they were not being provided the courses [they needed for college],” she said.

She and her colleagues were surprised to find the issues were pervasive in school districts not typically thought of as struggling. Several urban school systems in Rhode Island have a reputation for needing improvement, with Providence and Central Falls both actively under state takeover for underperformance, but wealthier suburban districts were also falling short on college and career preparation, the commissioner said.

In Bristol, an oceanside town with roughly 3,000 students in a regional school district, Madison Rodriques said the college entry requirements were easy to miss. The only time she remembers hearing she needed two years of world language to be college-eligible was during a high school orientation at the end of eighth grade. Though she luckily was paying attention, she believes many of her peers were tuning out. Now a junior at Bristol’s Roger Williams University, she had to step in on behalf of her younger brother, who is a high school senior, she said. 

“College wasn’t really on his radar when he was going into high school. I was the one to be like, ‘Oh, if you want to go, we need to do this and this,’” she said. “Not everyone has that older sibling or parent that’s going to be on top of that.”

After looking at the transcript data and holding 18 focus group conversations with students, state leaders acknowledged they had a problem to address. In the summer of 2021, they convened a working group that met over several months to hear the feedback of over 350 stakeholders.

“We do not want to be right; we’re here to get it right,” Stephen Osborn, the state education department leader spearheading the process, would tell educators and families.

Rodriques joined and spoke up about the disconnect between the courses laid out for her and her peers and the transcript requirements to be eligible for nearby colleges. She also advocated for more real-world skills like budgeting and how to do her taxes.

The leaders of the sessions “were so good at making sure voices were heard and elevated,” she said. “I could feel that they valued our presence there.”

The resulting proposal became the most commented-on set of K-12 regulations in the state’s history.

Now, schools are working to implement the new standards. Westerly High School Principal Michael Hobin is adding options for his students to gain certifications in life skills such as information technology, cosmetology or Spanish translation. He hopes that every member of the class of 2026, his current freshmen, will graduate with both a diploma and a credential awarded by an outside organization such as OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

“We want our kids … preparing for the rest of their life, whatever that means to them. If it means they’re going to go to college, then I want them prepared for college. If it means that they’re going into work, I want them prepared for work. If they’re going into the military, I want them prepared for the military,” Hobin said.

The new state regulations also call for more flexibility in awarding credit for the learning experiences students engage in outside the classroom. That’s a move to more equitably serve the numerous students in the state who are breadwinners for their family or caregivers, Osborn explained.

“Our kids are literally lifting their families out of poverty and then they’re being punished by their schools because they don’t have that time in their day to be able to go deeper into their academic schoolwork,” he said.

Schools may also combine courses for “flex credits” in two or more subjects, the new rules specify. That could mean delivering algebra in tandem with physics; English alongside performing arts or any number of other combinations, Osborn said.

Taken together, he hopes the standards send a clear message to school leaders.

“Coming from the Department of [Education], this is permission to be innovative.”

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Before the pandemic, almost two-thirds of Latino and more than half of Black graduates from the Los Angeles Unified School District were completing the series of 15 courses required by both the University of California and California State University systems. In 2020, the rate fell to 54 percent for Latino students and 46 percent for Black students.

First-time enrollment in Los Angeles’s community colleges also saw a sharp decline — another indicator of the pandemic’s impact on students’ post-secondary plans.

“We can’t allow the pandemic to let us go backwards,” said Audrey Dow, senior vice president of the Los Angeles office for the Campaign for College Opportunity, which produced the report. “We all know that a bachelor’s degree, a college credential, is the new entry level into work.”

The district’s overall graduation rate reached 82 percent last school year, but that doesn’t mean students are well-prepared for college. The authors of the report commend the district for requiring students to take math, English and other courses needed for college admission in order to graduate. But they urge leaders to take the next step by requiring higher grades in those courses to get a diploma — a C instead of a D.

The findings contribute to the many challenges facing Alberto Carvalho as he prepares to take over as superintendent of the predominantly-Latino Los Angeles district on Monday. 

“Los Angeles is ripe, is primed for rampant and rapid expansion of advanced academic opportunities for the students,” Carvalho said Thursday during a virtual event honoring him for improving college enrollment in Miami-Dade County Public Schools, where he was chief for 14 years. He’s the first to win Superintendent of the Year from the , a nonprofit that brings courses from the nation’s top universities into high schools. 

The Los Angeles district already has two schools working with the organization, but Carvalho said he plans to “forcefully” expand the model throughout the district. He said he’d also like to expand dual enrollment programs and work closer with colleges and universities, as he did in Miami-Dade, to have college professors teach high school and high school students attend college courses. 

“If we simultaneously continue to lift the performance of Miami and we lift the performance of Los Angeles, America as a whole is elevated,” he said.

Carvalho’s track record in Miami — eliminating F schools in the district and increasing the graduation rate from less than 60 percent to 90 percent — is why the board recruited him and unanimously approved his contract, Jackie Goldberg, a member of the board, said last month when Carvalho was in town for his first school visit. 

“He struck some chords that just seemed to ring the bell,” she said. “We don’t vote 7-0 on much of anything.”

Carvalho is under pressure to combat trends that have only worsened during the pandemic. Those include reversing , narrowing persistent achievement gaps and, with over 18 percent of students chronically absent, increasing attendance. 

“He is inheriting a district that, quite frankly, parents have lost a lot of faith in,” said Jay Artis-Wright, executive director of Parent Revolution, an advocacy group that was involved in a lawsuit related to reopening and now wants the district to provide more tutoring and individualized academic support. “There is a disconnect between the [learning] loss and the recovery that’s supposed to be happening right now.”

High school students are on a shorter timeline to make up for lost instruction before applying for college. This year’s juniors, she said, were in ninth grade when schools closed for the pandemic and might have missed out on opportunities to learn about financial aid and which courses to take.

The pandemic also “forced kids to make tough choices,” added Elmer Roldan, executive director of Communities In Schools of Los Angeles, part of a nationwide nonprofit that focuses on keeping low-income students on track toward graduation and college. High school students “felt the financial burdens” of their families, sometimes forcing them to work, delay college or choose a trade school as an alternative, he said.

But he agrees with the report’s recommendation that the district should increase the graduation requirement from a D to a C in those classes. That would make them eligible for admission to one of nine University of California or 23 California State University campuses. 

“Now is the time, because there is money on the table” for counselors and other programs to help students prepare for college, Rodan said, adding that if there’s hesitation from teachers and administrators it’s because “you’re asking folks to raise the standards without providing additional resources.”

The class of 2016 was the first to be required to complete the classes for graduation. The Los Angeles school board set a goal of 75 percent of graduates earning a C or higher in those courses by 2026. But not requiring a C for graduation sends students the wrong message, Dow said.

“The whole impetus behind the policy change was so they could have a shot” at the UC or CSU systems, Dow said. “They are not going to be eligible applicants.”

According to the district, graduation requirements are not changing.

Raising the standard to a C is a worthy goal, said Ana Ponce of Great Public Schools Now, which funded the report. But she added that it could lead to a decline in graduation rates if too many students miss the C cutoff or “grade inflation” to ensure they make it.

Reforming remediation

While the report focuses on getting more students into four-year universities, data shows that almost half of the Los Angeles district’s Black and Latino students who enroll in higher education attend community college. And once enrolled, they’re often placed in remedial courses that don’t contribute toward a degree. Those in remedial classes are also less likely to transfer to a four-year school, .

In 2017, California passed a law to reduce the number of students in remedial courses. Community colleges must consider multiple factors throughout a student’s four years of high school, including grade point average, before deciding that the student is “highly unlikely” to pass a credit-bearing course. 

But the Los Angeles Community College District’s nine campuses “have been slow to adopt and implement” those reforms, according to the new report. Three of the schools have reduced the number of remedial courses available in English, thereby placing more first-year students in college-level courses. But none has taken similar steps in math, the report said.

Less than 10 percent of Black and Latino students earn a degree or certificate within three years of enrolling in a Los Angeles community college, the report finds, and they are far less likely than white students to transfer to a four-year university within four years — 13 percent compared to 46 percent. 

The report recommends community colleges place more students in transfer-eligible English and math courses during their first year.

One of Carvalho’s first steps, Dow said, should be forming a partnership with Francisco Rodriguez, the chancellor of the community college district, to address the report’s recommendations. 

Of the 28,047 Latino students who graduated in 2021, 17,352 completed the required courses, and of those, 14,125 enrolled in college, the report shows. 

“There has to be a focus from the district to ensure that students are enrolling in college,” Dow said. “What is happening to these students who aren’t going anywhere?”