College and Career Readiness
All students should leave high school with the skills and knowledge to thrive.
Why This Matters for MN Students
Every Minnesota student should leave our K-12 system with the knowledge and skills to succeed in college and forge the path to a rewarding career. Unfortunately, we aren’t living up to this ideal. For too many students—particularly those from historically underserved backgrounds—we are falling short.
Gaps in critical opportunities, supports, and resources start early and persist into high school, where too many students of color, low-income learners, English Learners, and students with disabilities miss out on rigorous courses that could help lay the groundwork for college and career readiness. From Advanced Placement and honors to concurrent enrollment and postsecondary enrollment options (PSEO), students who have access and support to succeed in more rigorous courses are more likely to graduate from high school on time, enroll in college, graduate within six years, and are less likely to take remedial courses in college.
Policy Solutions
There are concrete steps state leaders can take to support the potential of each and every student, from ensuring a strong literacy foundation in the early grades, to removing inequitable barriers to rigorous high-school coursework. The following next steps can help move the needle:
Improve systems to track and support student success.
Minnesota’s Comprehensive Achievement and Civic Readiness system (formerly known as the World’s Best Workforce) requires schools to develop a strategic plan around student success goals and report progress over time. We can make this system stronger by adding a 9th-grade on-track indicator—an evidence-based practice that can help ensure early identification and intervention of students who need additional support—and better disaggregating reported data to clearly identify gaps.
Support equitable rigorous coursework enrollment practices.
Minnesota is home to significant disparities in who has access to advanced coursework—with students of color, low-income students, and students with disabilities missing out on opportunities to advance and even earn college credit. Across the country, states are starting to adopt automatic enrollment policies that opt students into rigorous coursework, helping identify students who may otherwise be overlooked. Minnesota can be a leader in closing rigorous coursework gaps by investing in an automatic enrollment program to increase equity and ensure all Minnesota students have access to courses that meet their full potential.
In addition to the priorities above, our “Closing the Rigorous Coursework Gap” reports layout more than a dozen actionable recommendations related to everything from teacher prep to student support.
Establish a Universal FAFSA policy
Minnesota ranks 42nd in the nation for FAFSA completion, and over the past two years we’ve left nearly $100 million on the table in unused Pell grant funds. We should follow the lead of other states and ensure all students complete the FAFSA before they graduate to significantly increase college assistance for low-income families.
Invest in high-dosage tutoring
Over the past several years, intensive tutoring has emerged as one of the most effective strategies to address disrupted learning, and a useful supplement to strong core instruction. As federal COVID relief funds sunset, we risk losing effective interventions without ongoing state support. While this program does require investment from the state, high-dosage tutoring is of critical importance in closing learning loss and other gaps in student achievement.
Resources