Half Of Graduating Seniors Not Ready For College [AUDIO]

Is your child college ready? Findings released by the College Board show that half of graduating seniors who took a college entrance exam did not have all the skills they will need to succeed in college or career.

57 percent of graduating seniors who took the SAT earned a combined score below what is needed to earn a "b" or better during the first year of college. The same can be said of the ACT. At least 60 percent are at risk of not doing well as freshmen.

Bob Schaeffer, at Fairtest, the National Center For Fair And Open Testing, says this is the 6th straight year of declines. "Trying to drive school reform by piling on more standardized tests in K-12 classes isn't working and kids are moving backwards not forward."

He says this should be a wake up call to schools to find out what they need to do to improve.

"There is no one size fits all solution, one that will work in Los Angeles and then in Trenton, New Jersey, so schools need to ask questions...is it the teachers...is it the resources, are kids coming to school hungry...then they need to find out how to fix things."

The College Board attributes the flat scores, in part, to its highest percentage of minority students, many of whom reported that English was not their first language.

"The country is not moving forward educationally and we need a new direction, one that doesn't think that standardized testing is going to magically improve our schools" said Schaeffer.