Overview

The NGA Center for Best Practices' Action Agenda for Improving America's High Schools can ensure the readiness of the nation's high school students for college, work, and citizenship. Its five major recommendations were the basis of the 2005 National Education Summit on High School in February 2005:

• Restore value to the high school diploma;
• Redesign high schools;
• Give high school students the excellent teachers and principals they need;
• Set goals, measure progress, and hold high schools and college accountable; and
• Streamline and improve education governance.

These recommendations guide the major efforts underway in states now, and supported through the NGA Center's Honor States Grant Program. This $42 million initiative is supported by a national coalition of foundations, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, the Kauffman Foundation, the Prudential Foundation, and the State Farm Foundation.

Since the release of the Action Agenda, the NGA Center has continued to release information to inform and guide states on state-wide reform efforts to improve America's high schools. The main recommendation of the report, Graduation Counts: A Report of the NGA Task Force on State High School Graduation Data, and agreement made in the compact signed by all 50 governors is for states to move toward using a standard calculation for a high school graduation rate.

See how NGA has made the economic case for increasing college ready graduation rates in Graduation Pays.

• Issue Brief: Retooling Career Technical Education
• Implementing Graduation Counts: State Progress to Date
• Honoring Progress newsletter
• Graduation Pays
• Reading to Achieve: A Governor's Guide to Adolescent Literacy
• Improving the High School-to-College Transition through Leadership and Governance
• Stronger Fiscal Incentives Can Improve Secondary and Postsecondary Outcomes
• 2004-05 NGA Chair Gov. Mark Warner's Initiative: Redesigning the American High School