Preparing Students for College and Careers

Preparing Students for College and Careers addresses measurement and research issues related to college and career readiness. Educational reform efforts across the United States have increasingly taken aim at measuring and improving postsecondary readiness. These initiatives include developing new content standards, redesigning assessments and performance levels, legislating new developmental education policy for colleges and universities, and highlighting gaps between graduates’ skills and employers’ needs.

In this comprehensive book, scholarship from leading experts on each of these topics is collected for assessment professionals and for education researchers interested in this new area of focus. Cross-disciplinary chapters cover the current state of research, best practices, leading interventions, and a variety of measurement concepts, including construct definitions, assessments, performance levels, score interpretations, and test uses.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Katie Larsen McClarty is chief assessment officer at Questar Assessments. She oversees item and test development, publishing, psychometrics, and research. Her own research centers on assessment design, college readiness, standard setting, and gifted education.

Krista D. Mattern is a director of ACT’s Statistical and Applied Research Department. Her research focuses on evaluating the validity and fairness of both cognitive and noncognitive measures for predicting student success. She is also interested in higher education issues such as college choice, major selection, and college completion.

Matthew N. Gaertner is a principal research Scientist in SRI International’s Center for Education Policy. His research focuses on college and career readiness and the effects of educational policies and reforms on disadvantaged students’ access, persistence, and achievement.