Just more than half of California 11th- graders who took an early assessment test were college-ready in math, and only one- fifth were prepared in English, according to results from the California State University's new high school testing program.

Forty percent of California high school juniors this spring volunteered to take part in CSU's early assessment program. Fifty-five percent of math test-takers were deemed college-ready, as were 22 percent of students tested in English.

Breakdowns for individual school districts will not be available until next week.

The program, in its first full year, offers juniors the opportunity to take an extended version of regular state standardized tests to gauge their college-readiness.

"We want to give these students a heads-up early," said Jack O'Connell, state superintendent of public instruction.

A partnership between the Long Beach-based state university system and California's K-12 schools, the program aims to smooth the transition from high school to college by giving struggling eleventh-graders extra help during their senior year so that they can avoid remedial course work if they are admitted to a CSU.

The early assessment program is a good way for Long Beach students to realize what knowledge they need to succeed in college, said district spokesman Dick Van Der Laan.

"We need to make sure that students are well prepared and that they know early on in their high school careers whether they have what it takes to be able to attend Cal State University," he said.

To help struggling students during their senior year, CSU faculty have developed a new 12th-grade writing and reading course and have set up Web sites offering math and writing tutorials and feedback.

Students who score high enough on the early assessment program can be exempted from taking the CSU math and English placement tests, which are given after admission to determine whether students need remedial course work at the university.

Even students with B-averages a CSU admissions requirement often don't fare well enough on the placement tests to avoid remedial work.

CSU officials hope to reduce the number of students needing remediation from 50 percent to 10 percent in three years.

"That's exceedingly important, because we need to drive down the number of incoming freshmen who require remediation on our campuses," CSU Trustee Roberta Achtenberg said. "In the long term, if we drive that percentage down, as we believe this test will help us do, we will improve graduation rates and shorten the time to a degree."

The results of this year's early assessment tests were made available to schools in the last week of September, but in future years they will be distributed by Aug. 15, to give schools more time to use the data.