The Promoting Readiness in Education to Prevent Additional Remediation and Expense (PREPARE) Act, introduced by Democrat presidential hopeful Amy Klobuchar and two of her Senate colleagues, is aimed at helping to reduce the need for students to take remedial courses when pursuing post-secondary education and improving degree-completion rates.
The bill, sponsored by the Minnesota senator, Alabama Democrat Doug Jones and New Hampshire Democrat Maggie Hassan, is intended to better align high school graduation requirements with entrance requirements for credit-bearing post-secondary coursework and provide resources to schools to strengthen their remedial programs and improve outcomes.
The PREPARE Act would provide competitive five-year grants to states to align high school and post-secondary education. Recipient states would be required to align high school graduation requirements with entrance requirements for credit-bearing coursework in state institutions of higher education; develop statewide standards for placement in remedial coursework based on multiple indicators; and develop statewide articulation agreements between high schools and public institutions of higher education and among public institutions of higher education in the state.