One major factor separates high school graduates who are ready for college from those who aren’t, a new study shows: how well students handle complex reading.
Trouble is, most states don’t even have reading standards for high school grades, and not a single state defines the kind of complexity that high school reading should have.
“If you’re not asking for it, you’re not going to get it,” said Cynthia Schmeiser, senior vice president for research and development at ACT, the nonprofit company that did the study.
In a complex text, organization may be elaborate, messages may be implicit, interactions among ideas or characters may be subtle, and the vocabulary is demanding and intricate.
The ACT isolated reading complexity as a critical factor by analyzing the results of the 1.2 million high school seniors in 2005 who took the well known ACT college entrance test.
Based on that test, only 51 percent of students showed they were ready to handle the reading requirements of a typical first-year college course. The literacy of today’s high school graduates has become an enormous concern for colleges and employers.
What differentiates students who are ready for college from the rest, the research shows, is an ability to comprehend sophisticated texts that may have several layers of meaning.