Nearly six months after giving the first statewide exam to identify students who aren't prepared for university-level course work, California State University officials found that nearly 80 percent of high school juniors they tested are not ready for college English.

The same test - called the Early Assessment Program - dealt better results in math, with 45 percent of participating juniors posting scores too low to prove they are ready for college-level math.

"The scores reveal what I've been saying all along," said Jack O'Connell, state superintendent of public instruction. "We must make our high schools more rigorous if we want our students to be prepared."

With a read on where prospective students stand, CSU leaders will work with high school teachers to close gaps between what English and math skills are taught in the classroom and the level of performance expected of freshmen when they arrive at college.

CSU officials emphasized the numbers released Wednesday are somewhat inconclusive because the test made its debut this year and has no basis for comparison. Still, they underscore a problem that continues to hound the 23-campus CSU system: Large numbers of freshmen, despite being among the state's top one-third of graduating seniors, aren't prepared for the academic rigors of college.

Last fall, nearly half of CSU's incoming freshmen weren't proficient in English and nearly 40 percent weren't prepared for college math. Remedial courses in both subjects cost the CSU system nearly $30 million last year.

"We want to be able to take those dollars and direct them to students who are already prepared," said David Spence, executive vice chancellor and chief academic officer for CSU.

University leaders hope that by identifying shortcomings in the junior year, students can study and improve during their senior year. They have set a goal to reduce the number of freshmen requiring remedial courses to 10 percent by 2007.

"We need to drive down the number of incoming freshmen that require remediation on our campuses," said CSU Trustee Roberta Achtenberg. "If we drive that down, we will improve graduation rates and shorten the time to degree."

CSU created the test to evaluate high school juniors' preparedness after years of slow progress in improving proficiency.

Last April, when students were required to take the annual statewide assessment exam, they could opt to answer 15 additional language arts questions and 15 math questions and write an essay, as specified by CSU faculty. CSU wanted to quiz students more on geometry, Algebra II and writing skills than the state test does, Spence said.

Roughly 385,000 high school juniors were enrolled in public high schools last spring. More than 150,000 took the CSU English exam and more than 115,000 took the math test. Educators said they expect participation to increase.

CSU officials did not provide detailed information on which high schools participated and a breakdown of results by school district, ethnicity and other categories. They also couldn't say with certainty how many in the pool of students who took the exam were on track to become eligible for admission to a CSU campus.

CSU faculty have created a senior-year English course for high schools with heavy emphasis on critical thinking and writing. Current senior-year English courses center around literature, but often lack college-level writing assignments, according to CSU officials. Faculty have also developed math diagnostic tests to help students and teachers identify weaknesses.

CSU officials said they have no plans to stop accepting students who need remediation and will continue to offer placement exams to incoming freshmen who don't score well on the early assessment as juniors.