Improving the High School-to-College Transition Through Leadership and Governance

This brief offers three strategies for streamlining education governance and improving the alignment of state policies across education systems.

Governors are united in their commitment to improve America's high schools and college completion rates. Nationwide, only 71 percent of students graduate from high school, and only 18 percent of high school freshmen go on to complete a college degree on time. Deficits in basic skills cost colleges, businesses, and underprepared high school graduates as much as $16 billion annually in lost productivity and remedial costs.

The 2005 National Education Summit on High Schools, cohosted by the National Governors Association (NGA) and Achieve, Inc., unveiled An Action Agenda for Improving America's High Schools to help governors address this problem. One of the Action Agenda's recommendations is to improve statewide education leadership and governance.

Currently, statewide education governance is fragmented. In almost every state, state boards and agencies for K-12 and postsecondary education operate independently and are not held accountable for common goals or education outcomes. Most states also lack a way to coordinate policies for high schools with those for public two- and four-year postsecondary institutions. Consequently, high school students, their parents, and educators receive conflicting and vague messages about what students need to know and be able to do to transition to the next education level.

Governors can pursue three strategies to improve statewide education leadership and governance.

• Create a single governance system for kindergarten (or early childhood) through postsecondary education. A single education governance system with authority over the entire system can improve the coherence of policy development and implementation across and within all levels.

• Create a permanent statewide education commission. Political or cultural circumstances in a state may prevent consolidating education governance. However, governors can create a permanent commission that brings together educators, policymakers, and business leaders to develop common goals, performance benchmarks, and education policies for the state's entire education system.

• Strengthen statewide governance or coordination of higher education. In addition to creating a statewide education roundtable representing the different levels of education, governors can strengthen the state's capacity to coordinate the policies of individual colleges and universities with state-level governing or coordinating boards that have budgeting, policymaking, and data collection authority.