Preparing High School Students for College: An Exploratory Study of College Readiness Partnership Programs in Texas

The National Center for Postsecondary Research is a partnership of the Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University; MDRC; the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia; and faculty at Harvard University. Nationwide, about 40 percent of college students take at least one remedial course to prepare for college-level coursework (Attewell, Lavin, Domina, & Levey, 2006). One cause of this high rate of remedial enrollment is the misalignment of high school graduation standards and college academic expectations (Callan, Finney, Kirst, Usdan, & Venezia, 2006; Venezia, Kirst, & Antonio, 2003). College readiness partnership programs attempt to address this problem by facilitating students’ transition to college.