The Campaign for College Opportunity has published a report on Latinos in Higher Education in California, with one section focused on college readiness. The report can be found at:
http://collegecampaign.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/2015-State-of-Higher-Education_Latinos.pdf
According to the report, in 2014 only 15% of Latino students were college ready in writing based on placement test scores.The report questions the validity of placement tests for writing, however, noting thatresearch has shown that assessment tests inaccurately place students in pre-college level coursework.The report argues that GPA is a better indicator of college readiness than tests. The report also notes that students can be placed up to four levels below the college-credit writing course, and thatonly 40% of Latino students who were placed into pre-college level English completed college-level English within six years. The report argues that given the cost, low level of completion, and inaccuracy of placement testing, the entire system needs to be redesigned. The report recommendsusing multiple assessment measures for placement and continuing to developaccelerated and compressed pre-college course designs.
In its critique of the validity of one-shot tests used for writing placement and its argument for multiple measures to assess college readiness, the report echoes the CCCC’s Writing Assessment: A Position Statement and the assessment section of the 2015 NCTE Educational Policy Platform,which can be respectively found at:
https://cccc.ncte.org/cccc/resources/positions/writingassessment