AUSTIN – Texas is the first, and so far, only state to meet all the American Diploma Project’s five key college and career readiness measures, Achieve, a national bipartisan organization, announced.
In a report called Closing the Expectations Gap, Achieve said “Texas has the most comprehensive approach to college and career ready accountability.”
“With the passage of HB 3 in June 2009, Texas became the only state that meets the minimum criteria Achieve believes necessary to measure and provide incentives for college and career readiness,” the report says.
Texas Commissioner of Education Robert Scott said, “Texas has worked strategically and comprehensively to adopt college and career readiness curriculum standards, increase graduation standards, develop end-of-course exams, enhance our data collection systems and expand our accountability system to report college preparation information. By aligning all of these elements, Texas is clearly leading the race to prepare its students for a successful life after high school graduation.”
Texas was one of the 13 charter member states to form the America Diploma Project Network, which Achieve oversees, in February 2005. Today, the network includes 35 states which educate nearly 85 percent of all U.S. public school students. As part of this project, Achieve, a bipartisan, non-profit organization created by the nation’s governors and business leaders to help states raise education standards, conducts an annual survey of all 50 states and the District of Columbia on key college and career readiness policies.
