College math readiness

Is Your Child Ready for College Math?


Help your high school student gain the necessary math skills to succeed in college and beyond.


By Linda Strean, Managing Editor GreatSchools

Your high-school student is on track to complete the math classes required by your state university. He may even have already passed the high school exit exam that your state requires. Does that mean he's prepared for college math?

Not necessarily.

Many Students Aren't Ready

Of the students in the high school class of 2006 who took the ACT for ollege admissions, less than half tested at a level indicating they would earn a C or higher in college algebra, the ACT reported. In another survey, one released in 2005 by the national nonprofit Achieve Inc., college instructors estimated that half of their students were inadequately prepared to do college math.

A significant number of these students probably wound up taking remedial math once they got to college. That means it is likely to take them longer and cost them more to get their college degrees. Studies also show that they are at higher risk for dropping out of college altogether.

At a time when an increasingly competitive global marketplace has focused attention on the need for math skills and when students are taking more standardized tests than ever, how did so many students graduate so unprepared?

Some of them didn't take enough math, some took the wrong math and some managed to pass the classes without learning the math. The high school exit exams many of them passed were designed to test 10th-grade skills, not college readiness.

The statistics are scary.

Scary, indeed.