What Is the College Readiness Gap?

Too many students are graduating from high school without the knowledge and skills they need to be ready for college-entry courses. As a result, far too many students are having to take noncredit remedial courses in college, if they are admitted at all.

For the past five years, nearly four out of five ACT-tested high school graduates were not ready for credit-bearing, college-entry coursework. The chart below shows the percentages of students who did NOT meet the ACT College Readiness Benchmarks.*

* The ACT College Readiness Benchmarks are the minimum ACT test scores that indicate a high probability of student success in selected first-year college courses—English composition, social sciences, algebra, and biology.

For detailed research on the college readiness gap, see:

• Crisis at the Core: Preparing All Students for College and Work
• Reading Between the Lines: What the ACT Reveals About College Readiness in Reading