Only 22% of U.S. Adults Believe Most High School Students are Prepared
Dale Erquiaga, CEO, Communities In Schools
(Arlington, VA, Wednesday, April 25, 2018) – Communities In Schools (CIS) has released results of a new survey examining how prepared or unprepared U.S. adults believe high school graduates are for success in college and in the workplace. Here is a sample of the key results:
Only 3% of U.S. adults believe most high school students are very prepared for success in college and only 22% believe graduates are prepared. More than half (56%) believe high school graduates are somewhat prepared and 17% believe they are not at all prepared.
Those who feel most graduates are somewhat or not at all prepared for success in college were asked to choose among a list of potential programs and intervention that would be most helpful in improving preparedness. Thirty-eight percent of all mentions included financial planning and management which was a statistical tie with social and life skills such as conflict resolution, interpersonal communications and persistence (37% of all mentions).
Additionally, only 5% of U.S. adults believe most high school students are very prepared for success in the workplace and 17% believe graduates are prepared. More than half (58%) believe high school graduates are somewhat prepared and 19% believe they are not at all prepared.
The programs that would be the most helpful in improving preparedness for the workplace are job and employment skills training such as interviewing and resume writing and social and life skills such as teamwork, communication and decision-making were the next most commonly mentioned interventions and programs at 42% and 38% respectively.
These results are based on telephone interviews conducted March 12-18, 2018, via the U.S. Gallup Poll, with a random sample of 1,506 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.
More details about how the Gallup U.S. Poll is conducted can be found here: http://www.gallup.com/224855/gallup-poll-work.aspx.