New Report Finds New Jersey's Record Graduation Rates Provide ‘False Hope’ to Rutgers Freshmen

NJ’s low bar for high school graduation results in nearly one in three incoming Rutgers freshmen requiring remedial math courses.

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J., Sept. 15, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Collaborative for Student Success, as part of its We're All Solvers campaign, today released a new report finding that New Jersey's record-high high school graduation rate is obscuring a widening Gap in math readiness among the state's college-bound students. The report, "False Hope: New Jersey Kids Aren't Ready for College," is authored by researcher Chad Aldeman and draws on placement data and interviews with faculty at Rutgers University-New Brunswick and community colleges across the state.

Centering on three critical discrepancies, the report highlights the disconnect in math skills between high school graduation and college readiness.

• New Jersey's Class of 2025 graduated at a record rate of 91.8 percent. However, only 58.9 percent of students in the same class passed the state's 11th-grade math test, the NJGPA. The rest passed through easier alternative tests or a subjective portfolio review. 
• These effects are showing up in the classroom at Rutgers where nearly a third of incoming freshmen placed below Calculus, and in many cases at the Algebra level, in 2025. In 2019, that number was just a quarter of freshmen.
• The report also points to a Gap in the state's math requirement itself. New Jersey allows students to meet the requirement with an SAT Math section score of 440, while the College Board's own research sets 530 as the score associated with a 75 percent chance of earning a C or better in a corresponding college math course.

"New Jersey families deserve to know what a high school Diploma actually represents," said Jim Cowen, Executive Director of the Collaborative for Student Success. "Right now, a record graduation rate is masking a math Gap that students carry with them into college, where it costs them time, money, and in too many cases, their degree." 

Community college data going back to 2009, tracked by Yvonne Greenbaun, president of the New Jersey Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators and a former mathematics professor, adds a further data point: remediation rates in community college have fallen over the same period that underlying math skills have declined statewide, suggesting that systems used to evaluate student readiness in high school and through college admissions are failing to correctly determine students’ preparedness for college-level math.

"Every student in this report met New Jersey's requirements for a Diploma ," said Chad Aldeman, the report's author. "That so many of them are still placing into remedial math at Rutgers isn't a reflection on the students. It's a sign that the state isn’t holding them to sufficiently high standards throughout K-12.”

Nationally, researchers estimate the cost of remediation to students, families, and taxpayers at $1.3 billion to $1.5 billion a year; in New Jersey, families spend an estimated $33 million annually on remedial coursework.

The report recommends that New Jersey adopt a single, fixed math graduation benchmark in place of its current menu of lower-scoring alternatives; publish annual state test results faster so families can act on them; direct intervention resources to early grades, where math gaps are most predictive of later outcomes; and consider a "college-ready" Diploma track paired with guaranteed placement into college-level coursework at any New Jersey public college or university.

The full report is available at WeAreAllSolvers.org/NJ/.

About the Collaborative for Student Success

The Collaborative for Student Success is a national organization working to ensure all students have access to high standards, rigorous instructional materials, and an honest measure of their own readiness for college and career. Its work includes the Honesty Gap and Graduation Gap analyses, CurriculumHQ, AssessmentHQ, and the We're All Solvers campaign.

CONTACT: Josh Parrish
Collaborative for Student Success
media@forstudentsuccess.org