A First Look at the Commom Core and College and Career Readiness

This report provides an estimate of current student performance on the Common Core State Standards using ACT college- and career-readiness data. The report also provides recommendations for local educators and state and federal policymakers that will be particularly helpful to the 44 states that are moving from adoption to implementation of the common standards. Some of the report’s key findings include:

• Across all Common Core domains, strands, and clusters, only one-third to one-half of 11th-grade students are reaching a college and career readiness level of achievement.
• As in other reports, including ACT’s most recent Condition of College and Career and Readiness report, the percentages of Caucasian students who met or exceeded college and career readiness were uniformly higher than those of African American, Hispanic, and other underserved students.
• ACT recommends state and district leaders begin to focus targeted instructional strategies to support student learning in four key areas of the Common Core State Standards: Text Complexity, Language and Vocabulary Acquisition, Number and Quantity, and Mathematical Practices.