First-Generation Students Lag in College Readiness, Report Says

About a quarter of high-school graduates who took the ACT in 2013 met all four of its college-readiness benchmarks, in English, reading, mathematics, and science. But students whose parents did not go to college fared quite a bit worse: Only 9 percent of them met all four benchmarks.

That finding comes from a report, “The Condition of College & Career Readiness 2013: First-Generation Students,” released on Monday by ACT and the Council for Opportunity in Education, a nonprofit group focused on access to college.

While the report highlights the disparities in students’ college readiness based on their parents’ education level, it did identify a few bright spots. Almost 94 percent of students who took the ACT and whose parents did not attend college hoped to earn a postsecondary degree, it found. And two-thirds of those students took the core courses ACT recommends.