College Readiness and State Standards May Not Match

The answer is: Everything EPAS measures usually is included in state standards; however, EPAS also measures important skills that may not be included in state standards. The absent skills often reflect more rigorous skills and knowledge in each content area, including those needed for success in college and other postsecondary programs, and, increasingly, the workforce.

EPAS offers assessments that serve students from eighth grade through the transition to postsecondary education and work. Eighth and ninth graders take EXPLORE, tenth graders take PLAN, and eleventh and twelfth graders take the ACT Assessment. Scores are reported on a common score scale, and are designed to inform students, teachers, and parents about a student’s strengths and weaknesses, while there is still time to address them.

The Standards for Transition work with the assessments to describe what students are likely to know and be able to do at various score ranges. They are based on the work of a team of content experts, teachers, and test development specialists who reviewed hundreds of test items answered correctly by 80 percent or more of the examinees within each score range. The team determined the skills and knowledge students needed to correctly answer those items. The 80 percent criterion offers those who use the Standards for Transition a high degree of confidence that students in a given score range will be able to demonstrate the skills and knowledge described.

So far, ACT has completed nearly thirty matches between individual state learning standards and the Standards for Transition. More state matches are in process. The matches reveal that certain Standards for Transition are absent from state standards. Usually the absent Standards for Transition are those that reflect more rigorous skills and knowledge in each content area, including those needed to succeed in entry-level, credit-bearing postsecondary coursework.

In other words, our review of nearly 30 state standards of learning reveals that they often are not as rigorous as those described in the Standards for Transition. For more information, contact the regional office serving your state.

Go to www.act.org/contacts/field.html for a directory.

The standards from the following states have already been matched to ACT’s Standards for Transition:

Alabama	Idaho	Nevada	Texas
Arizona	Illinois	New York	Washington State
Arkansas	Kansas	North Carolina	West Virginia
California	Louisiana	Oregon	Wisconsin
Colorado	Michigan	Pennsylvania	Wyoming
Florida	Mississippi	South Carolina
Georgia	Nebraska	Tennessee

Here are the skills most frequently missing from state standards:

English

• Use a colon to introduce an example or an elaboration
• Add a phrase or sentence to accomplish a complex purpose, often expressed in terms of the main focus of the essay
• Identify both the focus and the purpose of a fairly involved essay, applying that knowledge to determine the rhetorical effect of a new or existing sentence, or the need to add supporting detail or delete plausible but irrelevant material

Reading

• Summarize events and ideas in virtually any passage
• Use details from different sections of some complex informational passages to support a specific point or argument
• Determine the appropriate meanings of words, phrases, or statements from figurative or somewhat technical contexts
• Understand the overall approach taken by an author or narrator, including point of view, in virtually any passage
• Make comparisons, conclusions, and generalizations that reveal a feeling for the subtleties in relationships between people and ideas in virtually any passage
• Identify implied, subtle, or complex cause-effect relationships in virtually any passage
• Determine, even in situations where the language is richly figurative and the vocabulary is difficult, the meanings of context-dependent words, phrases, or statements in virtually any passage
• Make complex or subtle generalizations about people, ideas, and situations, often by synthesizing information from different portions of the passage
• Identify and then generalize about an author’s or narrator’s attitude or point of view toward his or her subject in virtually any passage

Mathematics

• Evaluate composite functions at integer values
• Apply basic trigonometric ratios to solve right-triangle problems
• Write an expression for the composite of two simple functions
• Use trigonometric concepts and basic identities to solve problems
• Exhibit knowledge of unit circle trigonometry
• Match graphs of basic trigonometric functions with their equations
• Exhibit some knowledge of the complex numbers
• Multiply two complex numbers
• Apply properties of complex numbers

Science

• Compare or combine data from two complex data sets
• Combine new, complex information (data or text) with given information (data or text)
• Understand precision and accuracy issues
• Predict how modifying an experiment or study (adding a new trial or changing a variable) will affect results
• Select a set of data or a viewpoint that supports or contradicts a hypothesis, prediction, or conclusion
• Predict the most likely or least likely result based on a given viewpoint
• Determine why given information (data or text) supports or contradicts a hypothesis or conclusion