Parents frequently ask if CPLS students are academically prepared for college. A direct comparison becomes possible when our students sit in a room with students from varied educational backgrounds and take the ACT, a test which measures their college readiness.
The College Board (creator of the ACT) recently released their annual report which helps us answer the above question. The CPLS Class of 2024 had an average composite score of 25.6 while the average composite score for students in Kansas was 19.4 and the national average was 19.5. But these composite scores only tell part of the story.
This report also identifies benchmarks, which are the minimum ACT scores required for students to have a high probability of success in relevant college courses. Every year, the College Board publishes the percentage of students in our state and across the nation that meet these college-ready benchmarks. The data in this chart shows that students from the CPLS class of 2024 were more ready for the challenge of college level academics as they significantly outscored their peers in Science, Math, English, and Reading.1 This also means that fewer CPLS students will require remedial courses in college which are costly and delay the graduation timeline.
Curiously, meeting ACT benchmarks or being well prepared for college is not actually a goal at CPLS but rather is a byproduct of classical Christian education. As our mission statement says, “CPLS exists to cultivate classically trained, lifelong learners, committed to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, who will enrich their community and God’s kingdom.” In Rhetoric School Convocations, we have recently begun using a catechism to remind students of why their time spent at CPLS truly matters:
“The aim of CPLS is not to prepare me for college, scholarships, or a job, but to prepare me to live the good life, by becoming like Christ and loving that which is true, good, and beautiful.”
2020 CPLS Alumna Courtney Cleverdon, a first year graduate student at John Brown University, felt well prepared for college. “One skill that really supported my college readiness was my ability to write. Writing in my classes at CPLS taught me to construct compelling papers that demonstrated a logical flow and a utilization of thoughtful source material, which prepared me to write and research well in both my undergraduate and graduate classes.”
1 Based on data from the CPLS Class of 2024 and https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/2023-Average-ACT-Scores-by-State.pdf