Above: Shasta High School graduates fling their mortarboards into the air at the conclusion of the graduation ceremony at Shasta High School in Redding on June 4, 2021. Credit: Randall Benton/EdSource
Students who want to attend a four-year public university in California must complete college preparatory courses known as A-G requirements. The sequence of courses often is different from a district’s high school graduation requirement, a source of confusion among many students and parents. In 2023, more than half of high school seniors failed to meet these requirements, which means that they were not eligible to apply to California’s public universities. An EdSource analysis shows rates of college-preparatory course completion among Black and Latino students, as well as those in inland and rural communities, are particularly low.
