About College Ready New England

The College Ready New England initiative (CRNE) resulted from two and a half years of regional discussions and work groups involving K-12, higher education, government, business and non-profit leaders in New England. Through CRNE, New England leaders are committed to developing strategies for leveraging their collective influence to strengthen P-20 education policymaking at the state, regional and national levels. The goal: create a regional network through which best practices and policy innovations could be shared.

Individually and collectively, the New England states face critical human capital challenges, each with important implications for quality of life in the region. Aging populations, growing numbers of immigrants, the continued flight of manufacturing jobs and the competitiveness of the knowledge economy all combine to make postsecondary education more critical than ever—for individuals and for New England as a whole.

The region has one of the world’s largest concentrations of postsecondary institutions and ranks high in terms of levels of educational attainment. Yet increasing numbers of New Englanders, many of them immigrants or minorities, fail to complete high school and prepare for, access or attain adequate postsecondary education.

For businesses in the New England states and region, their demand for skilled workers often goes unmet during periods of growth, curtailing opportunities for expansion and increasing incentives for businesses to relocate outside New England. In short, producing and retaining skilled, college-educated workers is more important than ever to the success of New England’s economy. Consider, specifically:

The Educational Pipeline

• According to some studies, on average, 75 out of 100 of New England's ninth-graders will graduate from high school, while only 44 will enter college immediately. Subsequently, only 34 of those 100 will return for the second year of college and only 25 will graduate within six years (for four-year degrees) or three years (for two-year degrees).

Demographic Trends

• New England states will experience low-to-negative overall population growth over the coming decade, with the majority of growth occurring among racial and ethnic minorities, whose high school graduation and postsecondary participation rates are typically lower than their peer groups.

• The overall size of graduating high school classes will shrink in several New England states over the next decade, resulting in thousands fewer high school graduates entering higher education and/or the workforce each year.

Achievement Levels & Gaps

• Persistent gaps exist between the academic performance and preparation of white students and their African-American and Hispanic peers.

• Barely 30 percent of the region's eighth-graders achieve proficiency on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) mathematics examination—and only 10 percent of low-income students achieve such levels.

• In one New England state, as few as 41 percent of 9th-to-12th graders enroll in an upper-level math course. And while overall SAT scores have improved over time, the performance of many underrepresented minority students lags behind that of their white and Asian counterparts.

Workforce Demand

• Slow growth in workforce supply threatens several New England states’ prospects for economic growth and deters growing industries and firms from remaining or locating in the region.

• Between 1990 and 2000, for example, Massachusetts’ workforce grew only two percent, the fifth-lowest rate in the U.S. Since 2000, its labor force has grown by less than one percent, threatening its ability to sustain economic growth.