raising graduation rates in an era of high standards: five commitments for state action

A Double the Numbers Publication from Jobs for the Future

Raising Graduation Ratesin an Era of High StandardsFive Commitments for State ActionBy Adria Steinberg and Cheryl A. Almeida

AWhite Paper prepared forStaying the Course: High Standards andImproved Graduation Ratesa joint project of ACHIEVE and JOBS FOR THE FUTURE,funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York

FEBRUARY 2008

JOBS FOR THE FUTURE seeks to accelerate the educational and economic advancement ofyouth and adults struggling in today’s economy. JFF partners with leaders in education,business, government, and communities around the nation to: strengthen opportunitiesfor youth to succeed in postsecondary learning and high-skill careers; increase opportu-nities for low-income individuals to move into family-supporting careers; and meet thegrowing economic demand for knowledgeable and skilled workers.

Raising Graduation Rates is one of a series of Double the Numbers publications fromJobs for the Future. These publication are designed to deepen support for state andfederal policies that can dramatically increase the number of low-income young peoplewho graduate high school ready for college and work and enter and complete post-secondary education.

About the Authors

Cheryl Almeida and Adria Steinberg are members of JFF’s Connected by 25 team. TheConnected by 25 initiative is directed at improving options and outcomes for the largegroup of young people for whom the road to a productive adulthood is interruptedprematurely. Far too often, these young people cannot secure the postsecondary skillsand credentials that are essential for citizenship, economic security, and productivity.

CHERYL ALMEIDA, Program Director, directs research for Connected by 25. She has over20 years experience in the fields of education and child development including onresearch, policy, and program development and evaluation.

ADRIA STEINBERG is Associate Vice President of Jobs for the Future, where she leadswork on improving educational outcomes and options for struggling students and out-of-school youth. She has close to four decades of experience in the field of education as ateacher, administrator, researcher, and writer. Combining knowledge of practice, policy,and research, her articles and books have made her a key contributor to the nationalconversation about high school reform.

Table of Contents

The State Context: Growing Challenge, New Opportunity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

A Framework for State Action. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Commitment 1: A High School Diploma That Signifies College and Work-Readiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Commitment 2: Pathways to High School Graduation and College for Overage,Undercredited, and Out-of-School Youth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Commitment 3: Turnaround of Low-performing High Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Commitment 4: Increased Emphasis on Graduation Rates and College-Readiness inNext Generation Accountability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Commitment 5: Early and Continuous Support for Struggling Students. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

A Commitment to Take Action. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Raising Graduation Ratesin an Era of High StandardsFive Commitments for State Action

In the first half of the twentieth century, states andschool districts took on the challenge of refashioningthe American high school into a universal institu-tion. In the first decade of the twenty-first century,an even more formidable challenge has presenteditself: how to ensure that high schools are successfulnot just in graduating the students who enter theirdoors but also in preparing those students to succeedin college.

Moving forward swiftly on both high school gradua-tion and college preparation rates constitutes anambitious and “dual” agenda. Neither the federalgovernment nor the state governments hold a blue-print outlining the steps to getting there. Althoughthe American education system was built on thepromise of a free public education, the system hasnever been held accountable for all young peoplecompleting high school, let alone finishing fullyprepared to pursue further education. But this isexactly what demographers and economists aretelling us must be done if the nation is to be compet-itive in a global economy driven by technologicalinnovation and if young people are to take produc-tive roles in that economy, enjoying a good quality oflife and contributing to healthy communities.

Beginning in the early 1990s, most states took thecritical first steps of establishing academic standardsand assessments for measuring student progress inmeeting those standards. For the most part, thiscommitment to standards-based education reformhas resulted in a steady increase in the percentage of

young people reaching at least the minimum bench-marks set and a diminution of the achievement gapbetween different demographic groupings ofstudents in reaching those benchmarks.

In 2005, Achieve, Inc., and the National GovernorsAssociation cosponsored a national educationsummit that for the first time ever focused exclu-sively on high schools. The impetus for the summitwas the 2004 American Diploma Project report,Ready or Not: Creating a High School Diploma thatCounts, which concluded that for far too manyyoung people, the high school diploma represented a“broken promise” that could no longer guarantee agraduate was ready to compete in the college class-room or the modern workplace. At the close of thesummit, an initial group of 13 states—now grown to32—committed to raise standards and graduationrequirements to a college- and work-ready level aspart of a multi-state Achieve effort called the Amer-ican Diploma Project Network. Achieve’s mostrecent annual 50-state survey reveals a steady growthin the last three years in the number of states that aretrying to address the gap by putting in place policiesconsistent with a college- and career-ready agenda(Achieve 2007b).1

Jobs for the Future 1

Raising Graduation Ratesin an Era of High StandardsFive Commitments for State Action

The State Context: Growing Challenge, New Opportunity

Yet even as a growing number of states were makingthe commitment to close the expectations gap, moretroubling news about high schools began to emergefrom major media outlets throughout the country.After remaining invisible for many years, dropoutsbecame a topic of intensifying public interest andscrutiny. Between 2006 and 2007, Time Magazineran a cover story entitled “Dropout Nation,” theOprah Winfrey Show aired a two-part special on highschool and collaborated with Time on a poll to drawcontinuing attention to dropouts, major press outletsthroughout the United States reported on a survey ofdropouts conducted by Civic Enterprises, and MTVlaunched The Dropout Chronicles at a NationalDropout Summit cosponsored by a number of high-visibility media outlets, Civic Enterprises, and theBill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

In the midst of this growing spotlight on high schoolgraduation rates and dropout rates, the governors ofthe 50 states agreed to sign the National GovernorsAssociation Graduation Compact—an agreement tomeasure graduation rates as carefully as academicperformance, and to do so with a common measureacross states.2 The Compact, in combination withthe American Diploma Project Network, signals thata growing number of state leaders have begun tograpple with one of the most difficult and importantchallenges of K-12 reform:

How to substantially increase the percentage of youngpeople graduating from high school while also contin-uing to bring academic standards into alignment with

2 Raising Graduation Rates in an Era of High Standards

the skills and knowledge required for success in highereducation and employment.

Leaks in the Educational Pipeline

Addressing this challenge requires a new level ofattention to the graduation and achievement gapsamong different income and racial groups. At a timewhen the fastest-growing portion of our youth popu-lation is low-income, African-American, andHispanic, only 65 percent of those from the lowerrungs of the socioeconomic ladder earn a high schooldiploma, compared with 91 percent of students fromthe middle and upper levels. (See Figure 1.) Thischasm-like gap in high school graduation ratesbetween students from low-income families withlimited formal education and their peers from higher-income, more educated families is becoming increas-ingly evident as national research is augmented bystate analysis of cohort graduation rates.

Less visible is the inadequate academic preparationof many high school graduates, especially those fromlow-income backgrounds. According to a recentstudy using data from the National EducationLongitudinal Survey (Goldberger 2007), only 21percent of high school graduates from the lowestsocioeconomic group are adequately prepared forcollege-level work (somewhat, very, or highlyprepared), compared to 54 percent of graduates fromthe middle and upper levels.3 As expected, the lackof adequate academic preparation relates to highcollege failure rates as well. While one out of twostudents from middle- and upper-class families canbe expected to earn a college degree, only one in tenstudents from the lowest socioeconomic group willdo so.

The young people who are on the wrong side of theachievement and graduation gaps do not have loweraspirations or less motivation than their moreaffluent peers. They too are “keen economists” whorecognize the demands of the workforce and aspireto a college degree. In fact, the majority of thempersist for years in seeking educational credentials.Yet, as these results and other state and national dataon high school and postsecondary graduation ratessuggest, many of these young people never reachtheir goal. Students who struggle in high school toooften find themselves without opportunities, quality

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

Figure 1: The completion gap between low-SES and high-SES students is thecumulative result of gaps in achievement along every step of the education pipeline.

Quintile 1 Quintile 2 Quintiles 3–5 Total

65% 80% 91% 84% 21% 30% 54% 45% 63% 72% 91% 83% 27% 42% 61% 55% 11% 24% 52% 39%

Graduate High School Graduate Prepared forCollege

HS Graduates Enrollingin PSE

Enrollees Completing PSE Overall % of studentscompleting PSE by SES

Percentage of eighth graders by SES status who attain different levels of education.Source: Goldberger (2007).

educational options, or a guiding hand to help themcatch up and get back on track to a college-readyhigh school diploma. Absent such supports, many ofthem leave high school without a credential andenter into a futile search for other pathways to apostsecondary credential and family-sustaining wage.

A recent analysis of data from the National Educa-tional Longitudinal Survey shows that close to 60percent of dropouts earn a high school credentialwithin 12 years of starting high school—in mostcases by obtaining a GED certificate. These youngpeople do not stop there; they persist in seekingeducation beyond high school. Unfortunately, thispersistence does not pay off the way young peoplemight hope. Although nearly half of these GEDholders enroll in a two- or four-year postsecondaryinstitution, fewer than 10 percent of those whoenroll ever earn a degree, leaving them with limitedcareer prospects at best (Almeida, Johnson, & Stein-berg 2006).

The achievement and graduation gaps indicated bythis data augur serious consequences for both theeconomic standing and the social well-being of thenation. Increasingly, all of our states rely on an edu-cated workforce to fuel their major growth indus-tries—such as health, biotechnology, and communi-cations. Yet the percentage of young people in theUnited States earning a college degree remains disap-pointingly low. Between 1997 and 2005, thepercentage of 25- to 29-year-olds holding a Bach-elor’s degree grew by less than 1 percent, and itremains below 30 percent of the young adult popula-tion (Goldberger 2007). Once a leader of developednations in the percentage of adults holding a collegedegree, the United States has fallen to tenth in itspercentage of degree holders among 25- to 34-year-olds (OECD 2007).

At the same time, states are finding that youngpeople who do not complete high school cost thestates a great deal: their higher rates of unemploy-ment and lower earnings result in reduced taxrevenues, and their higher rates of unemployment,poorer health, and higher rates of incarceration leavethe state with big public assistance, medical, andpublic care costs (Levin et al. 2007).

Increasingly aware of the impact of globalization anddeindustrialization on state economies, governorsand other state policymakers have begun to pay closeattention to high school and college completionrates, especially in comparison with other nationsand other states. Some have set numeric goals forpostsecondary completion rates; others are awaitingthe results of commissions or blue ribbon panelsstudying the “pipeline” that links education toeconomic growth. And, although many states haveinitiated high school improvement or reform effortsin the recent past, for the most part these have setgeneral guidelines for improvement and have notfocused on improving the educational options andoutcomes of low-income students.

A Time for Action

The time is right for state action. The renewed atten-tion to the scope of the dropout problem provides acritical opportunity to address the educational needsof low-income and minority students, especiallythose who are not on track to an on-time graduationor are out of school altogether. State policy andopinion leaders have key roles to play in ensuringthat these young people graduate from high schooland are on pathways to success in postsecondaryeducation. At a time when the extent and characterof the dropout challenge is becoming more visible,the necessary state policy push for college and work-ready standards must be complemented by strongpolicies that make those standards achievable for allstudents.

For states to make progress on this ambitious agenda,they will need to ask themselves the question that isat the heart of this paper: What combination of newpolicies and innovative strategies will help states addressthe dropout challenge in their high schools and, at thesame time, ensure that struggling students are betterprepared to earn a postsecondary degree or credential?

This paper calls upon state policymakers to committo five key outcomes and suggests strategies andaction steps that they can take to focus their high


school reform efforts on ensuring that these commit-ments are met. The recommended strategies build onthe recent actions of states to support the twin goalsof college readiness and graduation for all, as well ason a growing body of research and innovative prac-tice and programming that has yielded importantnew information about the kinds of supports that arerequired to help low-income and struggling studentspersevere and succeed. By building on and comple-menting ongoing systemic educational reform effortswith these strategies, policymakers can (and in somecases have begun to) gain traction in improvingeducational outcomes and options of high schoolaged students, especially low-income and strugglingstudents.

Commitment 1:A High School Diploma That Signifies College-and Work-Readiness

Completion of a high school program of study ofhigh academic intensity and quality has a significantimpact on success after high school, especially forlow-income, African-American, and Hispanicstudents. A key challenge states are facing is how toensure equal access for all to such a program of studyand to do so without the unintended consequence ofstifling local and school-based innovation and flexi-bility in curriculum design.

Commitment 2:Pathways to Graduation and College Successfor Struggling and Out-of-School Students

Many students find high school to be an alienatingand discouraging experience. As a growing body ofresearch and practice indicates, schools that are effec-tive—particularly for low-income, African-Amer-ican, and Hispanic young people—tend to be smalland emphasize relationships and relevance alongwith academic rigor. These schools combine personalattention, a college-going culture, and positive peerpressure with evidence-based practices to helpstudents catch up, accelerate their learning to achievehigher standards, and connect to postsecondaryinstitutions and career possibilities. Far too few suchschools exist, and most states lack the vehicles ormechanisms for helping to ensure that such schoolsare developed or replicated in communities withconcentrations of struggling students and dropouts.

Commitment 3:Turnaround of Low-performing High Schools

A relatively small subset of high schools account formuch of the current “graduation gap” that separateslow-income, African-American, and Hispanicstudents from their more affluent and white peers.But these schools, called “dropout factories” bysome, have proven immune to several generations ofreform. The challenge for school districts and statesis to develop strategies and policies that are powerfuland comprehensive enough to interrupt patterns ofpoor performance. To achieve the desired outcome,states will need to differentiate among schools notmaking their performance targets in order to identifythe subset of high schools that are the highestpriority for assistance, and then work with thosedistricts to turn them around or replace them withmore effective options.

Commitment 4:Increased Emphasis on Graduation Ratesand College-Readiness in Next-GenerationAccountability

Most state accountability systems focus schools anddistricts on improving student academic perform-ance, as measured primarily by the scores thatstudents get on statewide assessments. As states beginto tackle the dropout crisis and move to preparemore students to succeed in college, policymakerswill need to consider additional accountability indi-cators, recognitions, and incentives to encourage andpressure schools and districts to hold onto strugglingstudents, get them back on track to a diploma, andincrease student readiness for college and careers.

Commitment 5:Early and Continuous Support forStruggling Students

“Early warning” indicators, such as failing coreacademic courses in middle school and/or ninthgrade and sporadic attendance, can help schools anddistricts to reliably predict which students are highlylikely to drop out of high school. States need tosupport districts in developing accurate data on suchleading indicators and in providing just-in-timeinterventions and supports that will help studentswho are struggling get back on track to graduation.


Organized around the five commitments, this paperoffers a framework for how states can significantlyaccelerate their progress in improving graduationrates for low-income and struggling students whilecontinuing to push forward on aligning standards tocollege and work readiness. With the focus on theparticular dynamics of, and strategies for, high schoolimprovement and dropout reduction, the frameworkproposes a set of action steps and strategies for eachcommitment, based on a rationale and summary ofrecent state progress. Drawing on national and stateresearch, as well as on the experiences of pioneeringstates, school districts, and best-in-class programs,the paper provides guidance to state leaders on howto be more strategic and intentional in improving theeducational outcomes of low-income and strugglingstudents.

This framework is intended to complement andleverage existing reform initiatives in states, which inmany cases focus on a set of critical, systemic, K-12issues, including: teacher quality; school leaderpreparation and effectiveness; literacy across thecurriculum; science, technology, and mathematicsinstruction; and early childhood education (universalkindergarten and pre-K programming). To makegood on the five commitments outlined in thisframework, states will need to look at each of theseinitiatives through the specific lens of improving theeducational outcomes of low-income and strugglinghigh school aged students to and through postsec-ondary credentials.

Commitment 1: A High School Diploma ThatSignifies College- and Work-Readiness

Young people and their families have internalized themessage: High school is no longer enough; aim forcollege. Nationally, the number of students whoaspire to college credentials has doubled in recentyears, with the largest growth occurring among low-income students. In 2002, 80 percent of tenthgraders named a Bachelor’s degree or higher as theirambition, up from 40 percent in 1980 (Roderick2006). But so far, these high aspirations are notpaying off with higher college completion rates.

Although approximately two-thirds of graduatingseniors actually do enroll in college, only a third ofthese young people attain their goal of a collegedegree within four years, and only just over half earna degree within six years from entrance. While oneout of two students from middle- and upper-classfamilies can be expected to earn a college degree,only one in ten students from the lowest socioeco-nomic group will do so (Goldberger 2007).

With competition growing for an adult workforce tofuel—and attract—growth industries, the mismatchbetween high school preparation and college expecta-tions is a serious issue for states. While a number offactors can affect whether a student completescollege, a substantial body of research shows that ayoung person’s course of study in high school is thesingle biggest predictor of college success—greaterthan family background, parents’ education level,test scores, class rank, and GPA (Barth 2003).

One growing state response to this recent researchis to require more coursework in the core subjectmatters that are needed for college entrance andsuccess. According to recent research conductedby Achieve, Inc., 18 states have increased courserequirements for graduation and require studentsto complete a college- and work-ready curriculum(Achieve 2007a). These states fall along a continuumfrom mandating a core curriculum as a diplomarequirement for all youth (e.g., Michigan,Minnesota) to making the core the “defaultcurriculum” with an opt-out possibility (e.g.,Indiana, Texas).

The move toward a core college-preparatory programof study is an important trend. At the same time, itis evident to those undertaking this work that simplyadopting new course requirements is only the firststep in ensuring that all students take and complete amore challenging and intensive program of study in


A Framework for State Action

high school. Educational policymakers and leadershave begun to roll up their sleeves to address thecomplex and interrelated issues of quality, consis-tency, and equity.4 In doing so, they will also need toguard against the unintended consequence of onceagain enshrining the very school curriculum, struc-tures, organization, and schedule that havecontributed to the currently high level of studentdisengagement and failure.

Action Area 1: Ensure equity, quality, and consis-tency in the delivery of a core program of studyaligned to college expectations.

The young people who stand to benefit the mostfrom a high-intensity and demanding program ofstudy are low-income students and students of color.Recent research has found that a strong academicprogram of study that includes a math sequence atleast through Algebra II in high school reduces theBachelor’s degree attainment gap between white andAfrican-American and Hispanic students by morethan half. Moreover, the benefits of a college-readycourse of study extend to all students, whether or notthey go on to college, and previously low-performingstudents benefit the most (ACT 2007; Adelman1999; Barth 2003).

State policymakers can take a number of immediatesteps to ensure that new course requirements withina core program of study lead to such positive results:

• Monitor course-taking patterns across the state,disaggregated for race and income, and assess howthe data relates to achievement and graduationgaps.

• Enhance data systems to include student-level tran-script data in order to assess the relationshipbetween completing the core program of study,college readiness, and postsecondary attainment.

• Develop a process and multiple measures to assessand enhance depth and consistency in content andrigor of core courses.

Course-taking patterns indicate which studentsacross the state are completing a college-preparatoryprogram of study and whether there are gaps relatedto race, ethnicity, or income. But ultimately policy-makers need to know whether new course titlesequate to students’ learning more challengingconcepts and skills. One strategy that is gainingcurrency among states is to use end-of-course exami-nations in key subjects. Currently, 16 states have endof course exams within their state high school assess-ment systems (e.g., New York, Tennessee, Virginia)and another 11 states plan to implement them(Achieve 2007b). End-of-course exams can be usefulto show who has access to rigorous curriculum andwhich students may need more support and help toreach proficiency in core courses. Equally important,test results can be analyzed to identify teachers whoare especially successful in helping strugglingstudents and who can serve as models to their peers,as well as those who can use additional support andprofessional development.

Under the auspices of Achieve’s American DiplomaProject Network, 13 states have joined together inthe construction and implementation of a commonend-of-course Algebra II test, based on evidencethat this subject is a key gateway course to collegesuccess.5 The common test will help to supportequity across diverse schools by promoting consis-tency and quality in Algebra II courses within andamong states.

Curriculum audits is another strategy that a fewstates are beginning to use to make a deeper assess-ment of consistency, quality, and equity. RhodeIsland is the first state to create a statewide approachto validating local district courses. In spring 2007,the state began reviewing all district high schoolcurricula to determine whether they are adequatelyaligned with the state standards. The state will onlyendorse the diplomas in districts assessed to be inalignment. Delaware also requires all districts tosubmit course content for review to examine theiralignment with state standards (Achieve 2007a).

Such an approach could be adapted in larger states toallow for targeted reviews or provide tools to districtsto carry out their own audits of high school courses.Public reporting of this information can help to buildthe public will and appetite for college prep for all.


Action Area 2: Allow for innovation at thelocal level.

A key impetus leading states and districts to investconsiderable time, energy, and resources in stan-dards-based reform has been the desire to go beyond“seat time” and the accumulation of Carnegie unitsas the only measures of rigor and academic success.In theory, the existence of clear standards allows forvariance in how districts and schools ensure thattheir students meet those standards.

Most high schools continue to offer a traditionalcurriculum organized around the usual sequence ofcourses within each academic discipline. However,some charter schools, as well as district schools withcharter-like conditions, offer more integrative, inter-disciplinary, or project-based coursework, such ashumanities (teaching literacy and communicationskills through an examination of historical content)or an integrated four-year math sequence. In fact,such approaches often constitute a central aspect ofthe design of the new schools serving young peoplewho have traditionally been least well-served by theirschools and least well prepared for college and careers.(See box, “Curriculum Innovation in Boston.”)

After conducting extensive research on high-povertyschools around the country, a group of researchersrecently concluded that the subset of high-performing high-poverty schools employ innovativestrategies that are substantially different from thosethat dominate in the nineteenth and early-twentiethcentury “Old World” model of education stillcommon in most schools today. High-povertyschools that “beat the odds” with challenged studentsdo so by operating less like an efficient factory,moving everyone along the conveyer belt at the sametime, and more like an effective modern hospital,with all of its systems organized to analyze, diagnose,and form teams to serve its clients (Calkins et al.2007).

As more states and districts endorse a core programof study, it is important for state policymakers toleave the door open to evidence-based innovativeapproaches with a track record of success in helpinglow-income students gain access to and engage withthe skills and knowledge they will need to thrive in atwenty-first century world. For example, policy-makers can:

• Develop adaptive end-of-course exams that allowfor students in interdisciplinary or integrativecourses to complete the assessment over a period oftime, taking sections of the exams as appropriate tothe topics of study in their coursework;

• Include materials for integrated or interdisciplinarycourses in curriculum guidelines, sample syllabi,and model lessons the state provides to districts;

• Communicate clear messages to the districts thatthe state will support different delivery models forthe core program of study.

The first group of states to embrace new requiredcore programs of study are still in the early stages ofimplementation. As they move forward a key chal-lenge they will face is clarifying the differencebetween a core program of study and a more lock-step set of courses. Charter schools and new smalldistrict schools in the state can often provide helpfulexamples of how different delivery models are stillpossible. Thirty-eight states currently producecourse-level standards and/or model curricular mate-rials for schools (Achieve 2007b). Such materials


Curriculum Innovation in Boston

In 2004, Boston enacted a new graduation policy that encourages and makesexplicit flexibility for district high schools to adopt innovative curriculumsequences that keep students engaged, equip them to pass the state tests, andprepare them for postsecondary education. One of the options offered in thepolicy is for schools to implement a humanities curriculum that integratesEnglish and history courses.

Since enactment of the policy, seven new small schools have developed andreceived approval from the district for humanities course curricula. The districthas engaged four partners to provide content and curricular support andcoaching: WriteBoston, Facing History and Ourselves, Primary Source, andLesley University/Art Institute of Boston. At the same time, teachers have partic-ipated in “residencies” where they spend time observing and learning in theclassroom with experienced humanities teachers at two Boston pilot highschools, Fenway High School and Boston Arts Academy. These schools haveused their charter-like autonomies to make humanities a central part of theircore curriculum. In addition, coaches from the district’s Office of High SchoolRenewal work with the teachers implementing the humanities curriculum atthe new schools to help them create literacy-rich classrooms, use primarysource material, and develop and share tools such as writing rubrics.

could also include guidelines and sample syllabi thatincorporate examples of thematic and integratedcoursework. This would help underscore the messagethat the goal of access for all to a core college-readyprogram of study does not require a rigid deliverysystem but rather allows for innovations such asBoston’s integrated humanities curriculum.

Action Area 3: Promote dual enrollment and otherforms of college course-taking in high school.

One of the most promising ways to support collegereadiness is to make it possible for young people toexperience the level of academic work required tosucceed in college by taking college courses orcollege-like seminars while in high school. Suchcoursework can challenge and raise the aspirations ofyouth who are struggling to persist in and completehigh school and serve as a bridge for first-generationcollege-goers who might feel that college is “just notfor me.”

Often accelerated learning, such as is encouraged byAdvanced Placement courses or the InternationalBaccalaureate program, is viewed as only for studentswho have proven themselves academically. Newevidence emerging from more universal dual enroll-ment approaches and new models of “college in highschool” indicate the power of such approaches evenfor struggling students and dropouts (Vargas 2007).To support the development of accelerated learningand college experience and credits in high school forthe full range of learners, state policymakers should:

• Legislatively enact and fund dual enrollment for abroad range of learners, including targeted supportfor overage, undercredited, and returning dropouts;

• Support districts and schools in increasing accessfor all their students to college-level work in highschool (e.g., Advanced Placement, InternationalBaccalaureate).

Dual enrollment legislation in some states, such asIndiana, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania, is designed toinclude support for struggling students and out-of-school youth. Indiana’s Fast Track to College offersstudents, including returning dropouts at least nine-

teen years of age, the opportunity to earn a highschool diploma while earning credits toward a post-secondary degree. Louisiana provides for dual enroll-ment between high schools and community/tech-nical colleges for students aged 16-21.

A number of states have created incentives fordistricts and schools to open up their Advance Place-ment and International Baccalaureate courses to abroader range of students by developing statesystems for grading schools that give credit to schoolsand districts for the percentage of students whocomplete AP courses and other forms of college-in-high-school. For example, Florida’s indicatorsinclude the percent of students that completed atleast one AP, IB, or dual enrollment course.

Commitment 2: Pathways to High SchoolGraduation and College for Overage,Undercredited, and Out-of-School Youth

Nationally, one-third of high school freshmen enteralready overage for grade and behind in skills (Olson2006). These students face an uphill struggle toadjust to high school demands and get on track tograduation. Getting and staying on track also provesto be daunting for some of their peers, who enterhigh school with a stronger academic profile but fallbehind quickly and begin to drift away. The propor-tion of struggling students who are not on track tograduate from high school is even higher in low-income, African-American, and Hispanic communi-ties, and it is especially concentrated in the non-selective, often high-poverty high schools in thesedistricts (Balfanz & Legters 2004). A detailed statis-tical study in New York City revealed that nearly140,000 young people were either overage or under-credited or had already dropped from the school rolls(Lynch 2006).

Developing systemic solutions to a problem of thisscale presents states and communities with, in thewords of Michele Cahill, “an invention challenge ofunprecedented magnitude.”6 A key conclusion todraw from emerging research on high-poverty, high-performance schools is that beat-the-odds schools donot just make a traditional model of education workbetter; they reinvent what schools do. Often the highschools that beat the odds are small schools thatemphasize relationships and relevance along withacademic rigor. They combine personal attention


and a positive peer culture with evidence-based prac-tices to help students catch up, accelerate theirlearning, and connect to postsecondary institutionsand career possibilities. (See box, “What Can WeLearn from ‘Beat the Odds’ Schools?”)

Most states and districts have very limited capacity toencourage and support the development of such newmodels and pathways. At best, they have made smallinvestments in alternative education programming,often targeting such schools and programs primarilyto students with histories of behavioral difficulty. Inmany cases, school funding policies and practicesresult in the schools with the most underserved andchallenging-to-serve students receiving the fewestresources and the least experienced teachers (ACT2007; Peske & Haycock 2006).

While high school turnaround and improvementstrategies (see page 15) will eventually help to stemthe bleeding of students from traditional highschools, new, high-quality pathways that offer anddemonstrate new ways to increase college-readinessfor low-income and struggling students will also benecessary. States have a key role to play in encour-aging and supporting the development and expan-sion of such models. Through legislative and/oradministrative action, policymakers can ensure thatthe state has the vehicles to enable such developmentto occur.


Findings from recent studies converge around a set of school orga-nizational and instructional practices that characterize high-povertyhigh schools that beat the odds with struggling students.

� Focus on the transition into high school—It is not left up tothe students alone to negotiate the often bumpy transition fromthe middle grades into high school. Teachers and counselorsmeet individually and/or in groups with incoming students.Some models include summer programs between eighth andninth grade, and/or an intensive, first-semester focus on skillsto help students prepare for high school—both socially andacademically.

� Support students in staying on track—Early warning systemsare in place to identify and immediately reach out to studentsand families when students evidence attendance or performanceproblems, especially in literacy or numeracy skills. Schools areorganized to provide referrals or to offer necessary supports,opportunities, and services to students and families.

� Extend learning time—Teachers and administrators takeresponsibility for ensuring that students get the instructionaltime they need—during and beyond school hours—to stay ontrack with college preparatory requirements. Schools enableolder students to accumulate or recover credits over shorterperiods of time by organizing the calendar differently (forexample, by trimesters), using technology for distance learning,customized instruction, and feedback, and using extendedlearning time for projects geared to real-world standards(see no. 5).

� Provide academic challenge for all—All students are expectedto take on academic challenges (honors-level work or college-level work while in high school) and are supported in doing so.Teachers feel part of a professional learning community in whichthey are supported with high-quality curricula and professionaldevelopment particularly focused on keeping the intellectuallevel high, even while helping students to catch up on skills.

� Align performance standards to college and careerreadiness—Schools focus explicitly on preparing students forlife beyond high school, rather than on graduation as an endgoal. They use college and work-level standards as benchmarksagainst which to assess the academic rigor and relevance of theircourses. They embrace external standards and use assessmentdata to improve curricula and school practices, not just tomeasure students’ past performance.

� Focus on transition from high school to college andcareers—Schools make explicit links among academic work,student interests, college success, and careers, by creatingopportunities for upper-grade students to pursue acceleratedacademic learning, college exposure and course-taking, andwork internships (paid or unpaid). Such experiences are used asopportunities for students to develop twenty-first century skillsof self-management, communication, and continuous learningthat will help them succeed in college and careers.

Sources: Quint (2006); Just for the Kids (2006); Education Trust (2005)

What Can We Learn from “Beat the Odds” Schools?

Action Area 1: Create vehicles for the developmentand expansion of new schools for overage/undercredited students.

Longitudinal data on the educational pipeline indi-cates that a majority of young people who leave highschool without a diploma continue to pursue the goalof high school graduation and a college credential(Almeida, Johnson, & Steinberg, 2006). Theproblem is the dearth of school models and pathwaysto get them to this goal. Beyond offering and over-seeing charters, most states do not have strategies forsupporting the development of new school options,particularly for the most underserved populations ofhigh school aged young people.

States that are trying to improve the graduation rateof overage, off-track, and out-of-school youth arefinding that they need vehicles that can establishstrong, evidence-based design criteria that can beused to develop and/or import appropriate schoolmodels. Specifically, states are taking action steps to:

• Develop capacity for new school developmentthrough a dedicated state office and/or officiallysanctioned intermediaries;

• Give priority to charter schools directed at overage,off-track, and out-of-school youth;

• Revise and strengthen alternative education legisla-tion so that it becomes a vehicle for promotinghigh-quality options. (See box, “Oregon AlternativeEducation Policies.”)

North Carolina and Texas stand out for their effortsto support the vehicles needed for new school devel-opment. North Carolina has created the New SchoolsProject, a public/private partnership that operates as aschool development entity for “Learn and Earn” highschools across the state, as part of its mission of coor-dinating statewide high school reform efforts andproviding technical assistance and resources to localpartners to plan new small high schools or redesignexisting under-performing high schools. (See box,“Learn and Earn in North Carolina.”)

Similarly, the Texas High School Project is a public-private initiative committed to increasing graduationand college going through redesigning low-performing high schools, creating new schoolmodels, and fostering innovative partnershipsbetween high schools and higher education institu-tions. During the THSP’s first few years of opera-tion, the Community Foundation of Texas hasserved as the primary school development entityorchestrating site selection and technical assistanceprocesses. The foundation will share that responsi-bility with the Texas Education Agency as THSPcontinues to start up new schools.


Oregon Alternative Education Policies

Under Oregon statute, all school districts must maintain alterna-tive learning options that are flexible with regard to environment,time, structure, and pedagogy. Unlike many states, which desig-nate alternative education for students with behavioral challenges,Oregon holds to a broad definition of alternative programming asa “school or separate class designed to best serve students’ educa-tional needs and interests and assist students in achieving theacademic standards of the school district and the state.”

Districts can create and operate alternative schools within thedistrict or they may contract with community-based organizationsand institutions to run alternative programs. The contractingschool districts approve the sites and evaluate them according to amenu prepared by the state.

Every student in a contract alternative school is funded at aminimum rate of 80 percent of the state per pupil allotment.Weights in state funding add dollars for up to two additional

categories per student (e.g., special education, English languagelearner, pregnant/parenting). In addition, alternative schools andprograms may be funded in two ways: based on enrollment or onattendance. If a school has fairly consistent attendance andregular hours, it is funded for enrollment based on an annualcount of students. Schools that have unusual hours, program-ming, or class sizes because they serve a more challenging popula-tion are funded by attendance (i.e., according to the number ofdays students attend).

Students in alternative settings may earn credit in a variety ofways, such as showing classroom or equivalent work (e.g., asupervised independent study, career-related learning experiences,project-based learning), demonstrating competency or mastery viapassing exams, providing work samples, or providing documenta-tion of prior learning activities/experiences (e.g., certification oftraining).

Learn and Earn in North Carolina

North Carolina has embarked on an ambitious effort to create a system of smallhigh schools as part of a statewide high school redesign effort. This includesthe design and implementation of “Learn and Earn” high schools—earlycollege high schools designed to enable thousands of students across the stateto earn both a high school diploma and up to two years of college credit or anAssociate’s degree, tuition-free, in five years. Faculty from K-12 and highereducation work together to integrate course offerings and provide a seamlesssystem of early awareness and college preparatory academic and exploratoryexperiences to young people starting as early as sixth grade.

A primary support vehicle for this work is the North Carolina New SchoolsProject, a public/private partnership that operates as the state’s premier school-development entity. The NSP was launched to coordinate statewide high schoolreform efforts, as well as to provide technical assistance and resources to localpartners to plan the new small high schools. For example, the NSP providesmultiyear implementation grants to selected schools to develop innovative newmodels of teaching and learning.

The NSP expects to provide support to over 100 new small high schools overthe next several years. Strong support from the governor and other stateleaders has been instrumental in rapidly expanding education options in NorthCarolina. Currently, 33 early college high schools are open and a total of 75 areplanned. Tuition waivers are available to students in early college programs. Inaddition, the governor has provided increasing levels of support within thestate budget for the expansion and sustenance of new small high schools.7

Texas also has created an incentive to the develop-ment of charter schools for dropouts, by waiving itscap on open enrollment charters if the applyingschool will serve at least 75 percent at-risk studentsor returning dropouts. Nevada too has lifted the capon charter schools that exclusively serve at-riskstudents.

Action Area 2: Create the conditions to allow forand foster new pathways and models.

Among the many students who are not on track tograduate from high school on time or have alreadydropped out, there are subgroupings at very differentpoints in their academic trajectory and for whomdifferent approaches and models are proving to bemost appropriate. For example, school districts suchas New York and Chicago are finding that a substan-tial subgroup of dropouts may have already earnedhalf or more of their credits. Often older, withpersonal or family responsibilities, these youngpeople may be most likely to complete high schoolin a flexible late-afternoon, evening, and weekendprogram structured more like a college than like ahigh school and designed to allow for credit accelera-tion. Their needs may be quite different from thoseof younger struggling students who were kept back ayear or more in middle school, and then strugglewith attendance and credit issues in ninth grade. Forthese young people, an alternative high schooloffering smaller classes and more support servicesmay be essential.

To design and execute the full range of high-qualitymodels for the underserved populations of youngpeople, school developers need charter-like conditionsthat give them the needed flexibility to do whatever isnecessary to serve these students well. They also needschool leaders and teachers who understand thebarriers to learning that can be exacerbated by povertyand neighborhood and family crises but do not usethese barriers as excuses for lower achievement.

To move in this direction states can take actionsteps to:

• Allow charter-like flexibilities to new schoolsdesigned to serve struggling students;

• Leverage dual enrollment to support early collegehigh school models, such as Gateway to College,that blend secondary and postsecondary educationfor this population;

• Develop a pipeline of highly skilled teachers andleaders into these schools, through offering incen-tives, including differential pay, educational andcredentialing opportunities, and careeradvancement;

• Stimulate the creation of high-quality schoolsthrough an innovation fund and other strategies,such as debt financing and assistance in locatingand securing adequate facilities for new schools.

North Carolina again offers a strong example ofseveral of these strategies in action. Acceleratedinstruction, including postsecondary credits forstudents who are at risk of dropping out of highschool, can be found in 2003 legislation called the“First in America Innovative Education InitiativesAct.” This North Carolina law authorizes commu-nity colleges and local school boards to jointly estab-lish innovative programs for students who wouldbenefit from accelerated instruction and/or are atrisk of dropping out. This was followed by the estab-lishment of the New Schools Project, a public/


private partnership that operates as the state’spremier school-development entity. (See box, “Learnand Earn in North Carolina.”) Pennsylvania recentlyenacted and funded dual enrollment legislation thatincludes set-asides for youth who are economicallydisadvantaged and set-asides for specific dual enroll-ment programs such as Philadelphia’s Gateway toCollege, a collaboration between the School Districtof Philadelphia and the Community College ofPhiladelphia. The program allows out-of-schoolyouth with relatively high levels of credit attainmentand an eighth-grade reading level to be “dual-enrolled,” working simultaneously toward highschool diplomas and college credits.

Both North Carolina’s New Schools Project and theTexas High School Project are partnering with Jobsfor the Future and the University Park CampusSchool to create “clinical sites”—successful schoolsthat offer opportunities for principals, teachers, andcoaches in early college high schools to experiencefirst hand the practices of preparing students forcollege.

Commitment 3: Turnaround of Low-performing High Schools

One of the most serious educational challenges forstate policymakers is what to do to interrupt the flowof young people who drop out or are pushed out ofthe subset of large, underperforming high schoolswhere graduation is an iffy proposition. Many ofthese high schools are already identified as low-performing based on their academic performanceunder NCLB accountability. But adding accounta-bility for improving the cohort graduation rates—asa handful of states have started to do and as a reau-thorized NCLB is likely to require—will result in farmore high schools being identified for correctiveaction. In one of the first states to report disaggre-gated cohort graduation rates, officials calculatedthat the number of high schools identified as in needof improvement would grow by 30 percent or moreif the state were to add the schools that met theirachievement targets but had a graduation rate of 55percent or lower.8

Using a proxy measure of four-year cohort graduationrates, Robert Balfanz and Nettie Legters of JohnHopkins University identified 2,000 high schoolsacross the country that graduate 60 percent or fewerof their students, functioning, in effect, as “dropoutfactories.” Found in every state, these high schools areespecially concentrated in cities and in high-povertyareas (urban and rural). While these schools representonly 15 percent of the roughly 14,000 public highschools in the United States, they produce more thanhalf of the dropouts. Two and a half million youngpeople attend these schools, including over one-thirdof the country’s African-American and Hispanicpublic high school students (Balfanz & Legters 2004).

With their thick stew of problems, such high schoolsoften defy attempts at incremental and genericschool reform. Balfanz and Legters found that in thedropout factory high schools, as many as 80 percentof the ninth graders are overage when they enter highschool, require special education services, have lessthan seventh-grade reading and math skills, or arerepeating a grade for the second or even third time(Balfanz 2006). At the same time, because of teacherseniority rules and assignment processes, theseschools often have more than their share of new,inexperienced or underqualified teachers (Peske &Haycock 2006). The combination of strugglingstudents, high teacher and principal turnover, andfragmented reform initiatives can lead to low morale,fatigue, and a culture of low expectations (Calkins etal. 2007).

The challenge for school districts and states is tocome up with strategies and policies that arepowerful and comprehensive enough to interruptthis downward spiral. The action areas outlined heresuggest an approach states can take that begins withdifferentiating among schools not making theirperformance targets in order to identify a subset ofhigh schools of the highest priority for assistance.Once these schools are identified, states need a set ofpolicies and strategies directed at creating significantchange in the conditions and incentives withinwhich these schools operate so as to attract entrepre-neurial teachers and leaders and to ensure that theyhave the expertise and authority to act. Finally, thestate investment in high school turnaround anddropout reduction needs to be commensurate withthe magnitude and depth of the problem.


Action Area 1: Prioritize Turnaround Efforts in“Dropout Factory” High Schools.

Around the country, state officials are alreadyconcerned about the large numbers of schools thatare likely, by 2009-10, to fall into the most extremefederal designation for failure. In some states, thisnumber has already overloaded state and districtcapacity to provide restructuring support. The chal-lenge is to ensure that chronically dysfunctional highschools get the help they need to make the kinds offundamental changes that result in better outcomesfor students, most of whom come from low-incomefamilies and communities. This will require a systemfor identifying and intervening first in the highschools that are chronically failing to improveacademic performance and/or graduation rates.

Most states have the authority to play a direct role indistrict decision making around the restructuring oflow-performing schools and to take corrective actionwhen districts fail to make fundamental changes inchronically underperforming schools. However, fewhave chosen to do so (Ziebarth & Hassel 2005). Thefactors influencing states’ roles around low-performing schools are numerous but include lack ofcapacity, the absence of a sense of urgency, thenumber of schools facing restructuring, the politicalclimate, and the legal relationship between districtsand the states.

States generally have allowed even those schoolsfalling into the most extreme federal designation forfailure—seven years of low performance—to avoidreplacement or major changes in governance bychoosing the option of engaging in “another form ofmajor restructuring.” This, too often, means stillmore years of incremental change strategies thatproduce little improvement in student outcomes.Work is further complicated by a lack of flexibilityand reluctance to act at the district level, caused by acombination of long-standing bureaucratic practices,top-down management practices, collectivebargaining agreements, and tight budgets withcompeting priorities.

Academic improvement and rising graduation ratesare the ultimate measures of whether a school ismaking adequate yearly progress. Yet it can take a fullcohort or two of ninth graders (which means at leastfour to five years) to know whether the turnaround


efforts in a high school are indeed working. In thelowest-performing schools, the problem is too urgentto allow for such a long time to elapse before step-ping up or changing the intervention strategies.Recent research in Chicago and several other citieshas demonstrated that particular interim measures—for example, the on-time promotion rate of ninthgraders into tenth grade—can be highly predictive ofwhether students will complete high school. Basedon such evidence, states can establish interim indica-tors that provide reliable early indications ofprogress.

The action steps recommended below can lay thefoundation for a statewide high school turnaroundeffort:

• Differentiate among high schools to determinewhich need immediate fundamental turnaroundassistance or redesign/replacement based onachievement and cohort graduation rate indicators.

• Establish a consistent, evidence-based, and trans-parent set of benchmarks and indicators to measureinterim progress toward higher graduation ratesand college readiness (e.g., ninth-to-tenth-gradeon-time promotion; failure of two or more corecourses in ninth grade).

• Create a clear set of incentives and sanctions thatfoster and support local school restructuring effortsbut also ensure that a lack of progress results ingreater state intervention.

Under pressure from NCLB and local concernsabout the slow pace of reform in chronically under-performing schools, a number of states are taking amore active role to both push and support mean-ingful change in low-performing school. (See box,“Florida State Requirements for Lowest-performingSchools That Repeatedly Fail to Improve.”)

Like Florida, Arizona has also created incentives(such as significant on-site technical assistance andup to $60,000 in funding for schools to implementrestructuring plans) to promote and support restruc-turing efforts at the local level, while also ensuringthat a lack of reform progress will result in significantstate intervention (including alternative governancearrangements) (Calkins et al. 2007).

Florida State Requirements for Lowest-performing SchoolsThat Repeatedly Fail to Improve

Florida provides extensive supports to its lowest-performing schools, includingtechnical assistance, capacity-building measures, and funding ($1,000 more perstudent). Low-performing schools that repeatedly fail to make progress aresubject to a state-imposed reform plan that requires school districts to takeaction on 26 reform measures, such as:

Staffing

• Require teachers to reapply for their jobs

• Differentiate pay for highly effective teachers

• Hire proven educational leaders

• Employ safety and attendance personnel

Oversight

• Establish committee of community members to oversee reforms

• Document aggressive efforts to enroll students in choice and supplementalservices

• Report monthly progress

Student Support

• Provide intensive support to students retaking graduation exam

• Establish extended day programs for academic credit recovery

• Employ reading and math coaches for each grade

• Make contractual guarantees to entering ninth grade students

Community assessment teams closely monitor the schools and report monthlyto the state department of education on the schools progress institutingreforms.9 Districts that refuse to comply with the state reform measures faceincreased public scrutiny (e.g., state review teams monitor reform activities atthe school every two weeks) and financial sanctions (e.g., withholding ofdiscretionary funding). These actions have served to both change conditions inunderperforming schools and increase incentives for districts to reform beforethe state intervenes.

Source: Calkins et al. 2007 (Supplement)

Action Area 2: Create the conditions, capacity, andresources for turnaround.

For the most part, past efforts to turn around low-performing high schools have not produced thedesired results. These efforts have tended to focus onintroducing new instructional programs, accompa-nied by replacing the school leader and perhaps apercentage of the teachers. But they have not built astrong pipeline of entrepreneurial leaders and high-capacity teachers, with sufficient incentives to attractthem into such schools. Nor have they addressed thefundamental operating conditions that shape howeffectively these professionals can do their jobs.

In many states, this is a period of tight budgets andtough choices. Yet even with the competing needs ina state, the chronic dysfunction and underperform-ance of some high schools and the bleeding of youngpeople from these schools must be addressed. Highschool turnaround cannot be accomplished on thecheap. For example, it may require upgrading thedata system, instituting a longer school day or schoolyear for catch-up and acceleration, and fundingpublic-private partnerships with expertise in turn-around and the flexibility to bring that expertise tobear in the schools.

The action steps recommended below are designedto help states to create the necessary conditions andbuild the capacity required for a more ambitious andcomprehensive approach to restructuring,redesigning, or replacing the dropout factory highschools.

• Establish criteria by which schools gain greaterfreedom to act, including autonomy over staffing,schedule, organization, and governance.

• Ensure sufficient expertise and capacity—withinthe state department of education as well asthrough partnerships with intermediary organiza-tions—to support school turnaround.

• Attract entrepreneurial educators to lead and teachin turnaround schools, by offering incentives thatcould include, for example, career tracks, creden-tials, and financial benefits.

• Provide adequate resources and funding to supportturnaround efforts.

While no state has yet embraced this whole agenda(see box, “12 Tough Questions,” for a tool to accessyour state’s progress), a few are putting one or moreof these building blocks in place. One approach is toexperiment with “turnaround zones” or clusters—such as can be found in New York, Chicago, andseveral other major cities—that are using the threatof school closure and replacement to change theoperating conditions in the lowest-performing highschools.

For example, in 2007, the state board of education inMassachusetts offered two of the lowest-performinghigh schools and two of the middle schools theopportunity to become state “Commonwealth PilotSchools.” With the approval of the superintendent


and at least 65 percent of the teachers in the school,each of these schools decided to join this cohort.These schools will gain charter-like autonomy overtheir budget, staffing, school calendar, curriculum,and governance structure.

Several states also offer incentives for high-skilledteachers and principals to help turn around low-performing schools. For example, Georgia enacted agrants program to attract high-performance princi-pals to low-performing middle and high schools.Virginia has a program to develop a cadre of princi-pals who specialize in turning around chronically

troubled schools and are eligible for a range of incen-tives. Arkansas has a similarly program (NationalGovernors Association 2006).

Commitment 4: Increased Emphasis onGraduation Rates and College-Readiness inNext Generation Accountability

For the past two decades, state education reform hasbeen synonymous with setting academic standardsand developing assessments to monitor how wellschools and districts are doing in meeting those stan-dards. In most states, such efforts have resulted in


Evaluating Your State’s Commitment

� Has your state visibly focused on its lowest-performing fivepercent of schools and set specific, two-year turnaroundgoals, such as bringing achievement at least to the currenthigh-poverty school averages in the state?

� Does your state have a plan in place that gives you confi-dence that it can deliver on these goals?

� If not: Is there any evidence that the state is taking steps toaccept its responsibility to ensure that students in thelowest-performing schools have access to the same qualityof education found in high-performing, high-povertyschools?

Evaluating Your State’s Strategy

� Does your state recognize that a turnaround strategy forfailing schools requires fundamental changes that aredifferent from an incremental improvement strategy?

� Has your state presented districts and schools with:

• A sufficiently attractive set of turnaround services and poli-cies, collected within a protected turnaround “zone,” sothat schools actively want to gain access to required newoperating conditions, streamlined regulations, andresources; and

• Alternative consequences (such as chronically underper-forming status and a change in school governance) thatencourage schools and districts to volunteer?

� Does your state recognize that turnaround success dependsprimarily on an effective “people strategy” that recruits,develops, and retains strong leadership teams and teachers?

Enabling Conditions:

� Does your state’s turnaround strategy provide school-levelleaders with sufficient streamlined authority over staff,schedule, budget, and program to implement the turn-around plan? Does it provide for sufficient incentives in payand working conditions to attract the best possible staff andencourage them to do their best work?

� Building Capacity—Internal: Does your state have astrategy to recruit, develop, and place highly capable leader-ship teams and teachers on behalf of the lowest-performingschools?

Building Capacity—External: Does your state have astrategy to develop lead partner organizations with specificexpertise needed to provide intensive school turnaroundsupport?

Clustering for Support:Within protected turnaroundzones, does your state collaborate with districts to organizeturnaround work into school clusters (by need, school type,region, or feeder pattern) that have a lead partner providingeffective network support?

State Leadership and Funding

� Is there a distinct and visible state entity that, like theschools in the turnaround zone, has the necessary flexibilityto act, as well as the required authority, resources, andaccountability to lead the turnaround effort?

� To the extent that your state is funding the turnaroundstrategy, is that commitment (a) adequate and (b) at theschool level, contingent on fulfilling requirements for partici-pation in the turnaround zone?

12 Tough QuestionsA Self-Audit for States Engaged in School Turnaround

Source: Reprinted from Calkins et al. (2007, page 3).

some movement in the right direction, as evidencedby the fact that an increasing percentage of studentsare achieving the minimum competency target setby the state. Some states have also narrowed theachievement gaps among students of different racialand ethnic backgrounds.

For policymakers, this good news has been temperedby several growing concerns. One centers on thepotential unintended consequence of high-stakestesting creating an incentive for high schools to“lose” students who are struggling and are far belowgrade level. A very different but equally critical areaof concern is that proficiency targets are, for themost part, set too low. Achieve’s annual survey ofstates’ progress on closing the gap between the expec-tations young people are held to in high school, andthe ones they will face in college and workplace,shows how far states still have to go, despite somesteady progress, in aligning standards, assessment,and graduation requirements with the demands ofcollege and work (Achieve 2007b).

A number of states have begun responding to theseissues. Nearly a dozen states have begun to followthrough on the Graduation Rate Compact signed bytheir governors, and, for the first time, they arecalculating and publicly releasing four-year cohortgraduation rates, for all students and for differentstudent subgroups. The 32 states participating in theAmerican Diploma Project Network have made acommitment to raise the expectations of academicperformance to a college and career-ready standard,and 18 of them have a recommended or requiredcore program of study aligned to those standards,with an additional 16 states reporting plans to do so(Achieve 2007a).

As yet, few states have taken the next critical step ofincluding measures of both diploma attainment andcollege readiness in the accountability system.Placing a high priority on the cohort graduation ratein the accountability system will give states apowerful lever to encourage districts and schools topay attention to the progress of all students. It willsignify the state’s commitment to count and accountfor every student. This will be especially important as

states simultaneously raise the standards to a collegeand work-ready level.

The challenge will be to recalibrate accountability forhigh schools to support the twin goals of increasingthe number of students graduating and making surethat graduates are prepared for college and work. Tothis end, several states are now in the process ofreviewing and revising their frameworks and meas-ures for high school accountability. The first step isto set clear, easy-to-understand targets for improve-ments in the cohort graduation rate and growth inthe percentage of students reaching the college andwork-ready standard. This will require the state touse an expanded set of indicators that go beyondscores on statewide assessments and that recognizeand reward schools for both holding onto studentsand graduating more students college-ready.

Action Area 1: Establish high school graduationrates as a core accountability measure with cleartargets for progress.

As state policymakers learn the results of applying acohort graduation rate in their state, they are real-izing that the equity concerns driving attention tothe achievement gap cannot be fully addressedwithout simultaneously closing the graduation gap.To close the graduation gap, states will have to paymuch more substantial attention to graduation rates,especially of low-income, African-American, andHispanic students, and they will have to hold schoolsaccountable for ensuring that all students, includingthose who are off track to graduate on time, earntheir high school diploma. At the same time, statepolicymakers will need to find a way to avoid penal-izing alternative schools designed to serve studentswho transfer there after becoming seriously off trackto graduation or dropping out altogether.

By taking the following action steps, states can go along way toward focusing attention on the trueextent of the dropout crisis and the large number ofyoung people who are overage for grade and not ontrack to graduate from high school:

• Set clear and statistically viable progress measuresfor increasing graduation rates, incorporating on-track metrics predictive of high school graduation(e.g., ninth-to-tenth grade promotion, failure of


two or more courses in a year) to assess whetherstudents are on the trajectory to graduation.

• Publicly report four- and five-year cohort gradua-tion rates, by district and school and disaggregatedfor subgroups, including low-income.10

• Allow for the use of an adjusted cohort graduationrate for “second chance” high schools designed foroverage, undercredited students and dropouts.

The insufficient weight given to graduation rates instate accountability systems is the result, at least inpart, of federal law and regulations that put substan-tially more emphasis on academic indicators than ongraduation rates in measuring school and districtperformance. Only a few states—notablyLouisiana—have determined a way to weight gradu-ation rates within their state accountability index forhigh schools. In Louisiana’s accountability numericindex, a school that keeps a low-performing studentin school gets a higher score than a school that letsthat student drop out. Additionally, in the newmodel, 30 percent of high school performance isdetermined by the number of points high schoolsreceive for keeping students in school and gettingthem across the finish line, with higher values earnedfor students who attain both a high school diplomaand a diploma plus “endorsements” that signifyreadiness for college and careers. (See box, “Louisiana’sGraduation Index.”)

NCLB did not establish a common comparablemeasure of graduation rates. In its wake, many stateshave adopted numerous, often meaningless, gradua-tion rate measures, resulting in no real graduationrate accountability and no expectation that Americanhigh schools make progress to improve graduationrates. In light of the growing number of statesreporting four-year cohort graduation rates and theavailability of accepted proxies for cohort rates (suchas the cumulative promotion index11), there isgrowing consensus among national policymakers andpolicy advocates that the reauthorization of NCLBwill offer more explicit language to hold schools anddistricts accountable for graduation rates. States thattake the initiative in establishing graduation rateaccountability could serve as models to inform thedebate as the reauthorization process continues overthe next year.

Action Area 2: Develop an expanded set of indica-tors for holding high schools accountable forcollege-ready graduates.

Scores on statewide achievement tests including end-of-course exams are the focus of the educationalaccountability system in many states. While thesedata provide valuable information, they do not telleducators, policymakers, or the broader public every-thing they need to know about how well theirschools are preparing students to compete in a globaleconomy. The focus needs to shift to put moreemphasis on what students do and accomplish inhigh school, including graduating from high schooland successfully completing a college preparatorycourse of study, as well as earning college credits andindustry-recognized credentials while still in highschool.

Schools can and should do much more to helpstudents earn credentials and credits that acceleratesuccess after high school. Industry-recognizedcredentials can open doors to higher-paying jobs


Louisiana’s Graduation Index: Promoting Graduation andCollege- and Work-Readiness

Louisiana has established a keen focus on improving high schools that havehistorically been plagued with low levels of academic achievement and lowgraduation rates. As a key strategy, education leaders turned their attentionto the accountability system, establishing a graduation index to create incen-tives for high schools to both keep students enrolled to graduation and providea rigorous curriculum through their senior year.

Each student in the graduation cohort receives the designated points;scores are weighted and account for 30 percent of high school perform-ance score.

STUDENT RESULT POINTS

Academic Endorsement (college-ready) 180

TOPS Opportunity Award or Career/Tech Endorsement 160

IBC (International Baccalaureate course) or TOPSTech with Dual Enrollment or Articulation Credit 140

Regular High School Diploma 120

GED 90

Skills Certificate/Certificate of Achievement 60

Attender 30

Dropout 0

that help students pay for further education. Earninga minimum number of college credits while in highschool helps students know what it takes to besuccessful in college courses. It increases not onlytheir confidence but their college-going and comple-tion rates as well; and stimulates more rigor in highschool courses (Vargas 2007).

Action steps that states can take to create accounta-bility systems that provide incentives for districts andschools to both graduate more students and ensurethat graduates are prepared for college and workinclude:

• Establish reliable graduation rate and college- andwork-readiness measures.

• Use these measures to recognize and reward schoolsboth for graduating more students and for havingmore graduates meet a recognized standard ofcollege-readiness and especially to identify andreward schools with high concentration of low-income students that outperform their counter-parts.

• Incorporate graduation rate and college-readyassessment measures into the state high schoolaccountability system.

• Reward schools for helping students earn industry-recognized credentials and college credit.

States have begun to express interest in taking a crit-ical look at their high school accountability andworking to fashion “next generation” accountabilitysystems that create the right incentives for achievingthe twin goals of more graduates and more graduatescollege and work-ready. For example, NorthCarolina’s State Board of Education has convened anindependent Blue Ribbon Commission on Testingand Accountability to provide a comprehensivereview of the state’s accountability system. Thecommission, comprised of local educators, legisla-tors, testing and accountability experts, and businessleaders, is charged with examining how well thestate’s current accountability system aligns with newexpectations for student learning and schoolperformance and making a final report and recom-mendations to the state board of education. (See box,“A Proposed Framework of Next-Generation HighSchool Accountability Indicators.”)

Preliminary data on Louisiana’s Graduation Index(see box, page 17) suggest that expanding the indica-tors for high school accountability has helped tocreate the right incentives for promoting graduationand college and career readiness. The first year theGraduation Index was fully operational, the propor-tion of seniors not graduating decreased to 8 percentand the number of industry-based certifications


A Proposed Framework of Next-GenerationHigh School Accountability Indicators

� Stay in school and graduate on time

• Four-year cohort graduation rate

• Five-year cohort graduation rate

• Percentage of “off-track” ninth graders who earn enough credits to bepromoted to tenth grade

� Successfully complete a core course of study

• Percentage of students who complete recommended or required corecourse of study

• Percentage of students who perform at the proficient level or higher onend-of-course exams

• Percentage of students who successfully complete level of mathematicsaligned with entrance into community colleges and state four-year collegesand universities

� Earn career-ready industry-recognized credentials and/orcollege credit

• Percentage of recent graduates who earn industry-recognized credentialsthat prepare youth for meaningful careers

• Percentage of graduates who earn a minimum number of college creditsbefore graduation (through Advanced Placement, International Baccalau-reate, Early College, dual enrollment, etc.)

• Percentage of high school students who graduate with a minimum numberof college credits

� Succeed in postsecondary education and careers

• Percentage of recent graduates who need postsecondary remediation

• Percentage of recent graduates who persist in postsecondary education

• Percentage of recent graduates who attain career-ready certificates,Associate’s, or Bachelor’s degrees

• Percentage of recent graduates who enter the military or find meaningful,family-supporting employment within three years of graduation

Source: Achieve and Jobs for the Future (2007).

earned by students doubled. In addition, districtsand schools appeared to be more focused on dropoutprevention and recovery.

To help prepare students for college, states arepursuing different strategies to build college-readytests into their high school assessment systems. Themost common strategy, currently being pursued by18 states, is end-of-course exams. Several states areconsidering amending their current high school testsso that they are better measures of college-readiness.And a handful of states including Colorado, Maine,and Michigan now require all high school studentsto take a standardized test—usually the ACT or theSAT—to assess their level of college-readiness.(Maine has also obtained grant funding to provideevery eleventh grader complementary access to anonline SAT test prep course.) Each approach has itsbenefits and drawbacks, and it is too early to tellwhich will be most useful in assessing college- andwork-readiness (Achieve 2007b).

Commitment 5: Early and ContinuousSupport for Struggling Students

The knowledge base about how to identify likelydropouts and keep them on track has been growing,making it more possible than ever before to targetinvestments to the most promising and effectivepractices and policies. This research further advancesthe possibility, and the obligation, to address theseissues at the state level.

The new research challenges the common miscon-ception that dropping out is a singular, idiosyncraticevent, an individual decision at one moment in timethat is largely influenced by personal or socialcircumstances beyond a school’s influence or control.On the contrary, dropouts follow identifiablepatterns of performance and behavior—patterns thatschools, districts, and states can and should analyzeand address.12

In groundbreaking studies in large urban districtswith high dropout rates, researchers have pinpointedindicators that reliably identify students who, absenta school-based intervention, are unlikely to graduate.Recent studies conducted by Elaine Allensworth andcolleagues at the Consortium on Chicago SchoolResearch, using data from the Chicago public

schools, showed that an on-track indicator thatsignals when ninth graders are falling seriously offthe track to earning a diploma is 85 percent predic-tive of future dropouts (Allensworth & Easton2005).13 In the Philadelphia public schools, RobertBalfanz at Johns Hopkins University and LizaHerzog at the Philadelphia Education Fund foundthat school-based factors, such as behavior reportsand poor grades as early as sixth grade, have value inpredicting who later will drop out (Balfanz &Herzog 2005).

The power of this research is that it offers a set ofacademic indicators that are highly predictive andover which the school has control. It is especiallypowerful when considered in combination with agrowing body of evidence about highly effectivepractices and strategies for addressing early academicdifficulty in high school. The perception has longbeen widespread that we do not know what, ifanything, works in dropout prevention or reentry.This is no longer the case.

Researchers have validated the efficacy of practicessuch as: more intensive focus on literacy andnumeracy skills in the early months of ninth grade tohelp students improve their skills enough to handlehigh school-level texts and assignments; extendedlearning time in the after-school hours as part of thecatch-up and acceleration strategy; and quickresponse to academic failure, even before thereporting of first semester grades. Such strategieshave resulted in significantly more students passinggateway academic courses such as algebra and inhigher promotion rates from ninth to tenth grade,both of which are highly predictive of whether astudent graduates from high school (Kemple et al.2005).

To realize the benefits of this new research, state poli-cymakers need to take steps to improve their datasystems and help school districts to develop leadingindicators of students at greatest risk of dropping outso that schools can intervene before it is too late. Torealize a return on investment, states will also have to


• Support those districts to develop early warningsystems at middle school and ninth-grade levels.

Several states have taken a first step toward ensuringthat school disconnection is identified early enoughto provide timely and targeted support. For example,in its 2006 dropout legislation, Indiana requiresschools and districts to use an “off-track” indicator toreport the number of ninth graders who do not haveenough credits to be promoted to tenth grade and toadvise those students of credit recovery and/or reme-diation options. Nevada legislators, aware of howimportant it is to help students stay on track to grad-uation, recently passed legislation that allows eighthgraders to enter high school to take classes in subjectareas they have passed, while accessing creditrecovery for courses they may have failed in theeighth grade. Such legislation lays important ground-work, yet schools and districts will likely need addi-tional resources and support to fully benefit from it.

Action Area 2: Ensure that identified students getnecessary supports.

One of the marks of an entrepreneurial and effectiveleader of a school serving struggling students ishis/her ability to find and develop the resources toensure that students get the supports they need tosucceed. This often requires combining a number ofdifferent funding sources, each with its own eligi-bility and reporting requirements and its owndemands (Thakur & Henry 2005). The challenge forstate policymakers is to facilitate such braiding ofresources as part of an overall plan for providing thenecessary supports and services to struggling studentsthroughout the state.

Helping struggling students to get to the finish lineof a college-ready high school diploma will requirestates to use available resources and expertise morestrategically, even if this requires thinking differentlyabout K-16 investments, as well as investments thatmight cross youth-serving systems.

For example, states can take the following steps:

• Ensure that statewide initiatives designed toimprove student outcomes (e.g., literacy, expandedday/year; STEM) target resources to high schoolswith substantial numbers of struggling students.


ensure adequate support services to address both theacademic and environmental challenges that impedestudent learning. This will ensure that strugglingstudents reach the finish line of a college-ready highschool graduation.

Action Area 1: Develop an early warning system toreliably identify potential nongraduates.

Early warning systems have great value in helpinglocal and state policymakers predict which students(and how many) are unlikely to graduate unlessappropriate interventions and supports are triggeredand delivered. Studies on indicators predictive ofdropping out like those in Chicago and Philadelphiahave been repeated in Boston, Indianapolis, NewYork, and Portland, Oregon with similar results.These communities are using this data to inform andguide the design of school-based interventions andnew school models. Emerging results from this workpoint to the promise of this approach. For example,several of New York City’s transfer schools—small,personalized schools designed to help students whoare overage and undercredited graduate from highschool and move on to postsecondary education—aregraduating two to three times more of these studentsthan are comprehensive high schools (Lynch 2006).

The need for indicators that accurately predict futuredropouts is most immediate at the local level. Unfor-tunately, most school districts lack the capacity tocarry out the data research necessary to establishpredictive early warning indicators. The state canplay a critical role in helping districts be strategic indetermining the scope and dimensions of the localchallenge and targeting resources accordingly. As partof its critical role, the state can:

• Analyze available state data to identify the scopeof the problem and which districts have highconcentrations of young people with high risk ofdropping out;

• Promote statewide collaboration among agencies toenable braided funding across youth-servingsystems to provide necessary academic and socialsupports.

• Provide incentives to school districts to partnerwith community-based organizations in the devel-opment and delivery of multiple pathways to grad-uation.

A number of states have identified dropouts as astatewide priority. At least 13 states have recentlypassed education legislation that specificallyaddresses struggling students and out-of-schoolyouth, including Alabama, Georgia, Illinois,Louisiana, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. State responseshave varied from providing additional supports tostudents in danger of dropping out, to increasingand funding alternative pathways aimed at dropoutprevention and recovery, to embedding dropoutprevention more explicitly in governance andaccountability structures. Legislative provisions in anumber of these states provide for a range ofsupports and services to help struggling students stayon track to graduate from high school ready forcollege and work. (See box, “State Investments toSupport Struggling Students.”)

Most states focus their literacy initiatives on lowergrades. However, a few have taken steps to addressthe low literacy of high school students. TheAlabama Reading Initiative is one of the largeststatewide literacy initiatives specifically geared tosecondary school students. ARI schools have madecumulative gains roughly twice the size of gains innon-ARI schools. Florida also extended readingsupport services to middle and high school studentsby making reading funds a permanent part of thepublic school funding formula.

Several states are investing in local cross-sectorcollaboratives that bring together school districts,mayor’s offices, community-based organizations, andpublic care agencies to focus on improving outcomesfor struggling students and out-of-school youth.Pennsylvania’s Department of Labor and Industrycreated the Pennsylvania Youth in Transitionprogram, which provides funding for eight regional

partnerships to develop or expand cross-systemcollaboration dedicated to improving opportunitiesand outcomes for out-of-school youth and youngpeople aging out of foster care. The Nevada legisla-ture provided funding through the Nevada PublicEducation Foundation to expand the local Las Vegas-based Ready for Life collaborative to additionalcommunities.14 This expansion will create a networkof rural and urban communities addressing sharedchallenges to improving outcomes for strugglingstudents and out-of-school youth.


State Investments to Support Struggling Students

A number of states have provisions in their dropout or school reform legislationaimed at ensuring that struggling students get the supports and services theyneed to stay in school and graduate ready for college and work.

Through a pilot program, Alabama provides dropout prevention advisors totargeted schools to work with school staff, families, and public care agencies toidentify students in danger of dropping out and provide the support to getthem back on track to graduate high school ready for college and careers. Inaddition, the state’s Alabama Students for Success (PASS) Initiative offerscompetitive grants for districts to develop dropout prevention and interventionprograms to keep students in grades 6 to 12 from leaving school prematurely.

Similarly, Georgia is investing $15.4 million to allow each high school in thestate to employ a full-time graduation specialist. The graduation specialist willidentify likely dropouts and work with them to develop and implement a planto get them back on track to complete high school.

Pennsylvania awarded $2 million to the School District of Philadelphia tosupport efforts to keep struggling students from becoming out-of-schoolyouth. Part of the funding has been used to place dropout prevention special-ists (who are certified social workers) in the Philadelphia-area high schools withthe highest dropout rates.

Never have the expectations of our education systembeen higher. State leaders are faced with an urgentand simultaneous need to substantially improve ourhigh school graduation rate while also raising thelevel of academic performance to a standard ofcollege- and work-readiness. At a moment whenstates must rely on an educated workforce to fuelemerging growth industries, the cost of inaction isfar too great to young people, their families andcommunities, the states, and the nation.

States have made steady progress in recent years insetting academic standards, in increasing thepercentage of young people reaching at least theminimum benchmarks set, and in decreasing theachievement gap between different demographicgroupings of students. But important work remainsto be done to ensure that young people—and espe-cially low-income and minority young people—graduate from high school and are on pathways tosuccess in postsecondary education.

Renewed attention to the scope of the dropoutproblem provides a critical opportunity to addressthe educational needs of young people who are noton track to an on-time graduation, as well as thosewho are out of school altogether. By making andfollowing through on the framework of commit-ments articulated in this paper, policymakers cangain traction on raising graduation rates withoutcompromising on high standards. Now is the timefor state policymakers to commit to a combinationof new policies and innovative strategies to addressthe dropout challenge in their high schools and, atthe same time, ensure that low-income and strug-gling students are better prepared to earn a postsec-ondary degree or credential.


A Commitment to Take Action


Endnotes1 According to the 2007 survey, 18 states now require high

school students to complete a college- and work-readycurriculum to earn a diploma. States have also achievedsignificant progress in making academic standards inEnglish and mathematics reflect real-world expectations,but they have moved more slowly in developing comple-mentary assessment systems and holding high schoolsaccountable for the college-readiness of their students. Formore information on the American Diploma ProjectNetwork and related publications, see www.achieve.org.

2 For information on the states’ progress in implementing theCompact, see Curran (2006).

3 The measure of college preparation used in the study is acomposite measure adapted from code provided by NCESon the NELS 88/2000 data analysis system (DAS). Thiscomposite, based on the “CQCOMV2” variable from theDAS, combines information from the student survey recordand high school transcript data sets. It accounts for severalmeasures of high school performance:

• High school senior year rank in class percentage;

• Cumulative grade point average for academic courses;

• SAT combined test scores;

• ACT composite scores; and

• NELS 1992 math and reading composite test scorepercentiles.

Following the variable code provided by the DAS, this vari-able classifies students based on their overall ranking onthese five criteria. The resulting composite produced fivecategories of student preparation for college:

• Highly qualified: those whose highest value on any of thefive criteria would put them among the top 10 percent ofcollege students for that criterion.

• Very qualified: those whose highest value on any of the fivecriteria would put them among the top 25 percent ofcollege students for that criterion

• Somewhat qualified: those whose highest value on any ofthe five criteria would put them among the top 50 percentof college students for that criterion.

• Minimally qualified: those whose highest value on any ofthe five criteria would put them among the top 75 percentof college students for that criterion.

• Not qualified: those who had no value on any criterionthat would put them among the top 75 percent of collegestudents.

The study translates these qualification categories into“Academic Preparation” levels and combines the top twocategories into the single “Very/Highly Prepared” category.Due to subtle differences between the NELS data set avail-

able on the DAS and the NELS restricted data set used forthis paper, there will be slight differences between themeasure of college qualification or academic preparationused here and those used by other authors who use the DASpublic files to calculate this variable. For example, one ofthe criteria used in the CQCOMV2 variable was “Cumula-tive grade point average for academic courses.” This variablewas not available on the restricted data sets, so it was neces-sary to construct this average from the raw transcript data.

4 See, for example, Achieve (2007a); Achieve (2007b) ACT(2007); and Dougherty, Mellor, & Jian (2006).

5 The initial nine states that joined in this effort wereArkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New Jersey,Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. More recentlyArizona, Hawaii, Minnesota, and Washington joined,bringing the total to thirteen.

6 Michele Cahill, Vice President, National Program Coordi-nation and Director of Urban Education, Carnegie Corpo-ration of New York, framed the invention challenge in thismanner during an invitational meeting on next-generationaccountability held by the Alliance for Excellent Educationin Washington, DC.

7 For more information, see www.newschoolsproject.org.

8 Data presented at a statewide task force meeting on gradua-tion rates.

9 Community assessment teams are comprised of a statedepartment of education representative, parents, businessand municipal government representatives, educators, andcommunity activists.

10 States without adequate longitudinal data systems shoulduse the Cumulative Promotion Index developed byChristopher B. Swanson, director of the Editorial Projectsin Education Research Center and a noted expert ongraduation data. For information on the CumulativePromotion Index, seewww.edweek.org/ew/toc/2006/06/22/index.html.

11 See Endnote 10.

12 See Jerald (2006) for an excellent summary of the recentresearch.

13 A student is considered on track at the end of ninth gradeif he or she has earned at least five full-year course creditsand no more than one F (based on semester marks) in acore academic course.

14 To learn more about the Las Vegas Ready for Life collabo-rative, see www.readyforlifenv.org.


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raising graduation rates in an era of high standards: five commitments for state action

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