A Look at New York State Department of Education College-Readiness Statistics

In NYC, there’s a very interesting contradiction going on between high school kids passing their regents exams and graduating from High School, yet still not being able to cut it in college. Why are so many NYC public High School graduates not college-ready? Let’s start with some recent New York State Department of Educations statistics published in a June 14th New York Times Article.

• Only 37% of Students who entered High School in 2006 left four years later adequately prepared for college.
• In NYC only 21% of students who started High School in 2006 graduated in 2010 with high enough scores on state math and English tests to be deemed ready for higher education or well paying jobs.

The Racial Achievement Gap:

• 3% of Black students and 15% of Hispanic students statewide were deemed college-ready after four years of High School compared with 51% of white graduates and 59% of Asian graduates.

And finally, let’s end with a fascinating statistic that may have escaped the casual reader:

• More than half of these college-ready graduates came from only 20 of the 360 High Schools included in the study.

Since Creative Connections’ mission is to prepare students for the career and educational challenges of the 21st Century, these figures really resonate. But the more important questions for us are “What does it mean to be college-ready?” and “How do we help our students become college and career-ready?”

-Earl