Topeka ? Results from the first set of reading and math tests under the new Common Core education standards show most Kansas students are performing at or above grade level, but few are on track to be ready for college or careers by the time they graduate from high school.

That was especially true among high school students, where only one in four scored at levels indicating they are on track for college or the workplace in math, and only one in three met that standard in English language arts.

But state education officials said that’s because the new standards are more rigorous, and the tests require students to use more critical thinking skills than those used before, and they said they expect the scores to go up in the years to come.

Scott Smith, director of career, standards and assessments for the Kansas State Department of Education, delivers the first statewide scores under the new Common Core standards to the Kansas State Board of Education.

“Those students at the upper grades are exactly those students who are less likely to have seen these standards from grades three all the way to 10, so they’ve had the least amount of exposure, and the teachers are confident that they can move these students forward,” said Scott Smith, director of career, standards and assessments for the Kansas State Department of Education.

In 2010, the State Board of Education adopted the Common Core standards, which are intended to make sure students are prepared to enter college or the workplace by the time they graduate from high school.

Although the tests are useful for students and their parents to see how well the students are performing, they are primarily used to hold districts, schools and educators accountable for making sure all students are meeting expectations.

Preliminary statewide scores were presented Tuesday to the Kansas State Board of Education. They are based on how students performed in the statewide reading and math tests that were administered last spring.

Scores for individual schools and districts are tentatively scheduled to be released in early December.

The scores are broken into four categories: Level 1, indicating a student is performing below grade level; Level 2, showing a student is performing at grade level, but not on track for college or career readiness; Level 3, indicating a student is meeting grade-level expectations and is on track for college or career readiness; and Level 4, showing a student is exceeding expectations and on track for college or the workplace.

According to the results released Tuesday, nearly 36 percent of high school sophomores scored at Level 1 in math, and 23.4 percent were at Level 1 in English language arts.

Only 24.9 percent scored at the top two levels in math, and 30.9 percent did so in English language arts, the results showed.

By contrast, under the old testing system, more than half of high school students scored in the top two categories in English, and more than 45 percent did so in math.

Much of that was the result of where the state set its “cut scores,” the threshold scores that separate the four performance levels.

“Obviously we have higher percentages in Levels 1 and 2 than would be desirable,” Smith said. “But the teachers did not shy away from that.”

Smith said it would have been easy to set those cut scores at levels that would result in more students appearing in the upper performance categories, but officials deliberately chose not to do that.

“We got good at giving a certain kind of test,” said State Board chairman Jim McNiece, a Wichita Republican. “It was never designed to be a college and career ready test. It was designed to test proficiency. It was a rank-order test. We wanted to rank the schools and rank the kids. This test is designed totally different in terms of being focused on the student.”

That was the second time students were tested under the new Common Core state standards, but only the first time the state was able to report scores from those tests. In 2014, when the state moved to a new web-based testing platform, the central computers that administer the tests were hit by a cyber attack that made it impossible for many students to complete the exams on schedule.