3/15/05 -- A coalition of 13 states announced plans at a National Summit on High Schools to require more rigorous courses and higher graduation standards. The summit, held in Washington, D.C., Feb. 26-27, was sponsored by the National Governors Association (NGA) and Achieve Inc., an education reform organization formed by governors and top corporate executives.
Dominating the summit were reports that high schools are not adequately preparing students for college or the work force and that one-third of students do not graduate on time.
The coalition of 13 states pledged to make their core high school classes and tests more rigorous and to align their standards for graduation with the expectations of employers and institutions of higher education. The governors from these states also said they would strengthen accountability by publishing more data on dropout and graduation rates.
The participating states are Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Texas. Together, these states serve about 35 percent of the nation’s public school high school students, according to Achieve.
The effort will be based on the American Diploma Project, an initiative launched by Achieve last year to ensure all high school students are prepared for college-level work.
The states will set their own standards and graduation requirements, but have agreed to broad policies, such as requiring students to take a test to determine their readiness for college or work.
“For the first time, a group of states will reshape an institution that has far outlasted its usefulness,” says Ohio Gov. Bob Taft (R), co-chair of Achieve.
The governors’ support for more accountability and more testing doesn’t necessarily mean they support President Bush’s proposal to expand NCLB, however. The President wants to require two additional years of testing in high schools.
NGA Chair Mark Warner, the Democratic governor of Virginia, says while governors favor higher standards for high schools, they do not support the “rigidity” of NCLB with its “bureaucratic oversight from Washington.”
During the summit, the NGA and six foundations announced a $42 million initiative to support high school reform efforts carried out in the states. The Gates Foundation, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Wallace Foundation, Prudential Foundation, and the State Farm Foundation pledged a total of $23 million for the initiative. The rest will come from state grant recipients.
The initiative calls for the NGA Center for Best Practices to manage and award competitive grants to states for the development and implementation of policy strategies to improve graduation and college-readiness rates.
In his keynote speech at the summit, Microsoft Chair Bill Gates called America’s high schools “obsolete.”
“By obsolete,” he says, “I mean that our high schools -- even when they’re working exactly as designed -- cannot teach our kids what they need to know today.”
Gates told the governors, “When I compare our high schools to what I see when I’m traveling abroad, I am terrified for our work force of tomorrow.”