Delaware asked Achieve to analyze the quality of the state's high school content standards in math and English language arts (ELA) and its course-taking requirements to determine if its expectations are sufficient to prepare students for success in college courses and the workplace.

Achieve compared Delaware's standards to the American Diploma Project (ADP) benchmarks and to benchmark standards from Indiana and Massachusetts in math and California and Massachusetts in ELA. Since Delaware's standards extend only to grade 10, while the ADP standards are set at the end of grade 12, it's not surprising that significant gaps were found to exist. Key content, for example, is missing in algebra and geometry. In ELA, the state lacks guidelines describing the complexity and type of text students should be able to comprehend, and it doesn't place enough emphasis on analyzing text and constructing coherent arguments. Although Delaware's standards have some outstanding features, they fall short of preparing high school graduates for college or jobs in high-growth fields.

Achieve also compared Delaware's course requirements for math, ELA, science and social

studies to those of other states and to the admissions requirements at the state's three public institutions of higher education. Delaware's course requirements for high school graduation are comparable to those of other states. However, we found that neither the high school standards nor the graduation requirements nor the higher education admissions standards fully measure up to the ADP expectations because Delaware stipulates only the number of courses required, not their content.

Achieve recommended that Delaware close the gap between its current standards and ADP benchmarks by raising the rigor of its expectations, making them explicit and expanding them to include grades 11 and 12. To align its high school standards with the admissions requirements of its higher education institutions and with ADP standards, Delaware should specify the content of required courses. This means students should take four years of math — such as Algebra I and II, Geometry, and a fourth course such as Statistics or Precalculus — and four years of English — based on the ADP benchmarks in language and communication skills, literature, informational text, writing, media, research, and logic. (January 2005)