At the latest AASA national conference, educators unveiled a new campaign to better define what it means to be college and career ready after graduating from the nation’s school systems.

"The Redefining Ready! campaign indicators paint a more accurate representation of students’ potential. In addition to ACT and SAT benchmarks, the indicators include Advanced Placement success, dual credits, internship hours, career clusters, student attendance, community service and more,” said eSchoolNews.

The campaign aims to move away from simply standardized test scores and instead help define readiness for success through a wide range of measurements.

The need for such a campaign has become increasingly evident recently.

"According to ACT, out of 1.9 million test takers nationally, only 59 percent of the 2015 high school graduates were deemed college ready,” said eSchoolNews.

And just last week, a Hechinger Report article discussed how many of America’s students are getting stuck in remedial education after graduating high school because they have been determined to not be ready to yet take college courses.

“'Our new set of readiness indicators will open up the doors for more students to pursue their post-secondary goals with confidence,’” said AASA President David R. Schuler, according to eSchoolNews.

The next step for the campaign is lobbying for national support. Following the conference, AASA members were encouraged to take the new indicators to their school boards for adoption.

Read the full story.

Article by Nicole Gorman, Education World Contributor

2/23/2016