Project Rationale

The purpose of the South Carolina Course Alignment Project is to place the state in a leading role nationally by addressing the critical issue of improving course alignment between secondary and postsecondary educational institutions. An aligned K-16 system is one with clear, sequential expectations for students at each level. These expectations are designed to prepare all students for success in postsecondary education, the workplace, and society, and to enable them to continue to learn throughout their lives.

In order to improve alignment, high schools and colleges need to build new relationships and to examine the educational programming on both sides of the intersection - between the senior year in high school and the first year in college. This project will create the framework within which all aspects of this critical transition can be examined and, where necessary, redesigned to help promote greater student success and higher rates of postsecondary participation.

Improving the transition between high school and college is important for South Carolina for a number of reasons. The reality of the 21st century economy is that obtaining a postsecondary degree or career training is crucial for building a successful and prosperous future for each student as an individual, and for the state as a whole. The dynamically changing nature of the South Carolina economy suggests that the demand for students with postsecondary levels of education will continue to increase rapidly. The South Carolina Technical College System reports that at least 74% of jobs in the future will require an associate's degree or advanced training. Increased college participation and completion will be key to the evolution of the state's economy in a way that leads to increasing economic opportunities, growth, and international competitiveness.

The key outcomes for the project consist of the following:

• Specify the content and skills necessary for postsecondary success in order to improve student preparation in high school for college coursework
• Build connections between high school and college coursework in order to help reduce curriculum redundancy and to improve alignment of expectations
• Improve high school graduation rates by enabling more students to view a postsecondary education as a distinct possibility
• Increase the proportion of South Carolina high school graduates who go on to some form of postsecondary education without the need for remediation in college by providing them with more college experiences while still in high school.

This three-year project began in July 2007 and will be carried out in three phases, ending in August 2010.