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As Texas pushes more high schoolers to get ready for college and the workforce, new research suggests that some of the ways schools count students as ready don鈥檛 equally set them up for success after graduation.

The state rewards Texas school districts for preparing students for life after graduation, tying college and career readiness to more school funding and a higher school performance rating.

The Texas Education Agency has been increasingly strict on districts about college readiness. In the 2022-23 school year, state education officials raised the benchmark for schools to qualify for an A grade in the category of college and career readiness: Schools needed to get 88% of graduates ready for life after high school, up from 60% in prior years.

Researchers from four Texas universities nearly 1 million Texas high school students across eight graduating classes from 2016-23 to see how they fared after high school, including the wages they earned as well as whether they enrolled in college and completed their degree.

While English and math college prep courses have seen a boom in enrollment, the researchers found students in those courses were 5% less likely to earn a college degree or certification within six years of high school graduation than students who were not considered college ready. They were also 18% less likely to get a degree or certification than their dual credit peers. The results of the study, , suggest college prep courses offer a false signal of preparedness.

鈥淲e could be potentially setting students up for failure because we’re saying, 鈥極K, you’re college ready.鈥� But you actually get into college and you’re immediately taking developmental coursework,鈥� said Jacob Kirksey, lead researcher on the study and professor at Texas Tech University. 鈥淎nd maybe you’ve racked up, you know, loans as a result of that process.鈥�

Meanwhile, students who earned a credential in high school 鈥� be it an associate鈥檚 degree or a certificate 鈥� earned 15% to 20% more in wages later in life than students who were not college ready. Dual credit was also shown to predict a likelihood to enroll in and complete college.

The TEA has started a process to. To date, only a handful of English prep courses have received a . No math college prep courses have.

Kirksey has also called for Texas lawmakers and state education officials to rethink how college and career readiness is incentivized, offering public schools bigger rewards for higher-quality pathways like dual credit, and smaller rewards for lower-quality pathways like college prep classes. His previous research on the impact of teacher certification on student achievement led the state to in core classes.

鈥淐ollege, career and military readiness should not be treated as a black and white checkbox for students and districts,鈥� Kirksey said. 鈥淲e think by making that distinction 鈥� districts will have all the incentives they need to, again, be celebrating these better pathways.鈥�

The rise in popularity in college prep courses were a result of schools trying to respond to the stricter standards for college readiness despite limited resources, said Gabriela S谩nchez-Soto, a researcher with the Houston Education Research Consortium who studies college, career and military readiness. Prep courses were appealing because school districts were able to offer them without a massive overhaul to their curricula, S谩nchez-Soto said.

鈥淵ou can’t blame the players for playing the game,鈥澛� S谩nchez-Soto said. 鈥淏ut we need to always assess how well whatever thing we’re asking students to do is actually accomplishing. 鈥� If a requirement is not fulfilling its promise, we need to do something about it.鈥�

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