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Abstract

On February 10, 2010, Kentucky made history by being the first state to adopt the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The CCSS were designed to be more rigorous, focused, and applicable (Holiday, 2010) than previous standards. The adoption of these standards was predicated by Senate Bill 1, Unbridled Learning. This bill required legislative bodies to develop a unified strategy to reduce the high college remediation rates of recent high school graduates by at least fifty percent before 2014. Along with high schools being required to address underprepared college students, state universities were to align their remediation courses with the new standards. This research study compares content assessed on course finals from Kentucky public universities in highest-level remedial mathematics courses and content assessed on college placement examinations. The study addressed the following two research questions: (1) what mathematical prerequisite knowledge do state universities consider necessary to be college ready? Specifically,=1a) What content domains do the state universities emphasize in their remediation courses?;1b) Is there consistency across the state public universities with regard to the content domains?; and (2) Is there consistency between Kentucky’s mathematics placement assessments (ACT, COMPASS, and KYOTE) and with four-year universities’ Kentucky Mathematics College Readiness Expectations (KM-CRE)? Findings suggested that consistency across universities and placement examinations in content emphasis exists. Examinations were heavily weighted in Algebra readiness (Expressions and Equations, Functions, and Algebra).

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