ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the application of college and career readiness (CCR) standards to individual students. CCR standards have been defined for the assessments developed by the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, the two groups of states that developed tests as part of the Common Core State Standards effort. The new CCR benchmarks are based on actual student success in entry-level college courses. Although CCR systems that rely solely on test scores can be faulted for adopting a narrow definition of readiness, a single-minded focus on improving predictive accuracy would lead to unfortunate results. The precision of readiness designations is compromised by dichotomization, which has an insidious effect. Dichotomization of readiness conclusions should be avoided, and comprehensible cautions should be attached to any readiness scores.
