Nearly half of California students aren’t ready for jobs or college — as major school district admits it’s ‘significantly off track’

More than 44% of California students are not considered ready for college or a career, according to recently released academic performance stats — and one major school district acknowledged Tuesday it’s falling well short of a meager goal to improve its results.

The California Department of Education released its 2026 performance metrics for all school districts, which also revealed that a majority of California students still can’t read or do math at grade level.

Statewide, only 55% were considered ready for college or careers, which is determined through a variety of indicators such as completion of graduation requirements or technical education courses.

San Francisco Unified School District has been trying to boost its readiness numbers to 70% of graduates by June 2027 — but at a Tuesday meeting, the district made the damning admission that it won’t reach that goal.

This year, only 59.2% of the graduating cohort in San Francisco was marked ready.

The district now has less than a year to reach that 70% target it set back in 2022, when it wanted to improve on its 57.5% readiness grade back in 2020.

But Superintendent Maria Su said Tuesday that the district is far from meeting that goal.

“We have decided to rate our progress towards this goal as significantly off track,” Su said. “The only reason why we are rating ourselves as significantly off track is because we’re not moving fast enough for our own target that we’ve assigned for ourselves.”

Su noted the district, which is slightly ahead of the state average on student readiness, is going in the “right direction.” California gave the San Francisco district a “green” rating on college and career readiness, an improvement from “yellow” last year.

California tracks readiness through a variety of indicators, including whether graduation requirements are met, the completion of Advanced Placement or other accelerated coursework, scores on statewide assessments or grades on designated courses that meet University of California standards.

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Career readiness can be demonstrated through work-based learning programs, registration in pre-apprenticeship programs, military services or other vocational training.

But SFUSD’s data marked some concerning trends, Su said, with only white and multiracial students improving in college readiness. All other demographic groups saw declines.

On the bright side, the percentage of unhoused students saw big improvements in college readiness, up 11%.

A potential red flag for why the district may not reach that 70% goal is the fact that not enough students exited their “early warning indicator” status, which is used to identify incoming high schoolers who showed signs of high truancy, chronic absenteeism or low academic performance.

Education officials at the meeting discussed a variety of tactics such as curriculum changes to try to tackle the issue. But ultimately, they agreed the goal can’t be reached.

“We need to adjust the target that we’re supposed to reach by 2028, because 70% is — we’re just not going to be able to reach that target within a year,” Su told Board Commissioner Parag Gupta.

Many discussed whether to change what’s being measured in the first place as a possibility, and staff are expected to re-evaluate interim goals. Board President Phil Kim said the body will start a process in January of revisiting the district’s goals among other matters.

Democratic leaders have tried to portray the recent academic metrics — including the 55% statewide readiness score, which was 2% up from last year — as an improvement.

“At a time when California continues to focus on accelerating learning and closing opportunity gaps, these results provide important evidence that our sustained investments are making a difference,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement.

But critics told The Post major issues remain unaddressed.

“California families deserve answers, not another victory lap over marginal gains,” said Sonja Shaw, the Republican candidate for state superintendent.