ACT released a new report this morning, The Condition of College & Career Readiness 2012. The report concludes that a majority of students are at risk of not succeeding in college or in the workforce.
The report covers the ACT-tested high school graduating class of 2012. The study assessed college readiness benchmarks in four areas – English, reading, mathematics, and science. Only 25 percent of students met all four benchmarks, while 28 percent met none of them. Overall, 60 percent of students met two of the four benchmarks.
According to the ACT, the report represents 52 percent of all 2012 graduates in the United States, but only 28 states were included. Researchers limited their evaluation to states that had at least 40 percent of their students participating in the ACT. North Carolina was not one of them. The state’s participation rate was 20 percent.
Nevertheless, ACT produced separate career and college ready reports for each state regardless of participation rate. North Carolina did better than the national average. Indeed, 30 percent of ACT test takers in NC met all four benchmarks, which is unchanged from 2010 and 2011.
