A Systematic Comparison of the American Diploma Project College Readiness Standards with Those of the ACT, College Board, and Standards for Success

This study of four national English language arts standards compares the content of three sets of standards with a benchmark set, the American Diploma Project (ADP), to see how closely the sets agree on what students should know in English language arts to prepare for college. The match between each of the three comparison sets and the 62 content statements in the ADP benchmark varies, from 77 percent of the statements for the College Board College Readiness Standards and 68 percent for Standards for Success to 34 percent for the ACT College Readiness Standards. But only 5 percent of the ADP statements fully match the content in all three comparison sets-27 percent when partial matching is also considered.