Previous College-Readiness Initiatives

SREB worked with six states — Florida, Kentucky, Maryland, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia — to accelerate progress in college and career readiness. SREB’s Strengthening Statewide College/Career Readiness Initiative (SSCRI), funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, helped state leaders and policy-makers improve students’ readiness in essential academic subjects and navigate the complexities involved in addressing the problem on a statewide scale. During the life of the project, the National Common Core State Standards were adopted by many states and were used to guide the work of creating college- and career-readiness standards and assessments.

SREB Tools to Help States Adopt a College and Career Readiness Agenda

SREB provided tools for states, including a model agenda for college and career readiness that calls for each state to take five actions. Unlike solutions that address readiness at isolated points in the education pipeline, SREB’s model agenda focuses each state’s K-12 and higher education efforts on the same set of college-and career-readiness standards and related student assessments. Using this model as a framework, SREB evaluates college- and career-readiness policies in each participating state and assists state leaders as they develop and implement their own college- and career-readiness action agendas. This model agenda can be used by other states to create a college- and career-readiness initiative.

SREB also helped states re-examine teacher development activities and senior-year transitional course curricula to ensure that teachers are prepared to use state college- and career-readiness standards in their instruction and that students receive the help they need to meet the standards. 

SREB’s SSCRI initiative ended in April 2011. SREB remains committed to the College and Career Readiness Initiative and the work happening in the states through additional work toward its model college and career readiness agenda.