Kentucky, Indiana and dozens of other states received mediocre or poor marks in the report card on higher education to be released today by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

A nonpartisan group of education policy leaders based in San Jose, Calif., the center promotes access to college and educational training. It issues reports every two years, but this is its first report card detailing a decade of progress - or lack of it - in each state.

"Measuring Up 2004" rates each state on student preparation for college, how many attend college and how many finish. It also measures how many families can afford college, and how much states benefit from college-educated residents.

States received more C's, D's and F's in the report than A's or B's.

In college affordability, Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana earned D's or F's. Only three states - California, Utah and Minnesota - rated a C or above.

Diane Stevens, a third-year early childhood major at the University of Cincinnati, says she agrees with that assessment. She must work full-time to pay for her schooling, she said, because of limited financial aid and higher tuition.

"If America really wants to improve the economy, how do they expect to when you have to be rich in the first place to afford college?" she asked.

More middle-income and lower-income families are being priced out of two-year or four-year colleges than had been a decade ago, study authors said.

In Ohio, young adults from high-income families are three times more likely to go to college than families with lesser incomes.

The share of average household income for a low- to middle-income family to pay for a year at a public, four-year college in Ohio went from 28 percent a decade ago to 36 percent.

The figures are better in Kentucky, with 22 percent of a family's income paying for a public four-year college.

Several Ohio and Northern Kentucky educators questioned those percentages, although most public and many private colleges in Kentucky and Ohio raised tuition this year.

This comes just as more high school students are taking higher-level math, science and advanced placement courses to prepare for college.

"The fact is, high schools have improved over these last 10 years, and we haven't seen commensurate higher-education gains," said Patrick M. Callan, president of the national center. "The nation has stalled in the development of human talent through college opportunity."

Ohio's record on college preparation has been spotty.

While 47 percent of high school students take at least one upper-level math class, only 23 percent take upper-level science, the study found. And the percentage of Ohio high school students graduating (including those who receive a GED) fell during the decade, from 90 percent to 87 percent.

Ohio Board of Regents officials said they expected poor grades, in part because state appropriations for higher education dropped by more than $1,000 per student over the last five years.

"The problems they identify do exist, and we have initiatives in place where we're trying to address those," said Darrell Glenn, director of performance reporting for the board of regents.

In Kentucky, more students took upper-level math (53 percent) and upper-level science (29 percent). Kentucky high school graduation rates grew from 81 percent to 86 percent.

Kentucky got a B-minus for improving enrollment of young students in college, but the state could do better, college leaders admit.

"We need to reach (students) earlier and we need be mindful that a lot of our students are first-generation college students," said Chris Cole, spokesman for Northern Kentucky University.

Ohio's percentage of young adults (ages 18-24) in college stayed about the same at 34 percent, though its working-age adults in college declined. It received a C-minus.

"Ohio is slowly moving in the right direction," said Pamela Ecker, program chair of multimedia information design at Cincinnati State Technical and Community College.

"Every middle school and high school student needs to view him or herself as 'college material.' " Ecker said. "I'm not sure if there's anything that will convince a 15-, 16-, or 17-year-old to do well at college prep work if college isn't on the student's radar screen."

Education department leaders in recent years have made some progress in aligning high school academic standards with what colleges needsaid J.C. Benton, an Ohio Education Department spokesman.

"I don't think any of us will be satisfied until we reach straight A's, but that sounds like that was a tough bar to hit," Benton said.

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For more information on the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education and its report, visit www.highereducation.org.

E-mail damos@enquirer.com