Moving Forward: High Standards and High Graduation Rates

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Moving Forward: High Standards and High Graduation Rates

A Joint Project of Achieve, Inc. and JFF

JFF and Achieve are collaborating in a policy initiative, Moving Forward: High Standards and High Graduation Rates. Selected from Achieve’s American Diploma Project and the National Governor’s Association Honors States competition, three states will develop an enhanced capacity to collect leading indicators of dropping out and to use those indicators to assess the value of their investments. The work will result in frameworks and tools for other states and districts to use while enacting a policy development process that is rooted in the practice.

Rationale

Rapidly growing attention to the performance of America’s high schools creates a golden opportunity and urgent need to help states and local districts pursue twin goals: raising standards for earning a high school diploma and significantly increasing the number of students who earn such a diploma rather than dropping out of school. Compared with other industrialized countries and to the skill requirements of the 21st-century economy, too few American high school students earn a diploma, and of those who do, too few are prepared academically with the skills they need to succeed in further education and careers.

Nationally, for every 100 students, only 68 graduate from high school in four years, 40 enroll in college, and only 18 earn a two- or four-year degree on time. Further, enrolling in college is not the same as being prepared to do college-level work: 30 percent of first-year students in two- and four-year postsecondary institutions must take at least one remedial course.

These trends came to the attention of state policymakers, business leaders, and opinion leaders at the 2005 National Education Summit on High Schools, cosponsored by Achieve and the National Governors Association. Governors from 45 states joined leaders from business and K-12 and higher education, as well as foundations, to discuss an agenda for state action. As a result, twin goals—raising standards for earning a high school diploma and increasing high school graduation and postsecondary enrollment rates—are rapidly moving to the top of state education policy agendas.

While the goal of higher standards often conflicts with the goal of better high school graduation rates, Moving Forward aims to show that the supposed tension between these goals is more perceived than real, and that synergies can be achieved in addressing both issues at the same time. Both goals are ambitious, yet there is little choice but to pursue them simultaneously rather than taking sides in a needlessly polarizing debate.

Expected Results

Moving Forward will help states gain meaningful traction on this dual agenda, with expected results to include:

Up to three states and two pilot districts in each state committed to structured coordination of state and local planning efforts and actively taking steps outlined in implementation plans in regard to state and local policy, accountability and data systems, programming, and interventions directed at improving graduation rates;
Enhanced capacity in these states and districts for collecting leading and lagging indicators of dropping out and using them to assess the value of investments;
Tools and frameworks for other states to use while enacting a policy development process that is rooted in practice; and
Sharing of the lessons and tools derived from project states with all states, and particularly with those in Achieve’s American Diploma Project Network and the National Governors Association Honor States network.

Product Design and Activities

Specifically, Achieve and JFF will work with state and district teams to:

Assess and make suggestions for improving state and district accountability and data systems, especially in regard to gathering and using leading and lagging indicators of dropping out to assess return on investments;
Strengthen current state high school redesign plans to incorporate knowledge of promising strategies and practices for keeping struggling students connected through graduation and reconnecting those who have left to other pathways to a high school diploma;
Identify new strategies, practices, and policies for states and districts based on opportunities and work at the local level and promising work elsewhere
Assess where existing or proposed policies might have unintended consequences harmful to struggling students and out-of-school youth; and
Provide technical assistance to help states plan how best to implement solutions within the framework of their high school redesign plans.

Funder

Carnegie Corporation of New York

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