Governors agree to uniform education standards

The National Governors Association (NGA) issued today Sunday a news release of a 45-state agreement to develop a uniform standard that allows comparison of state graduation rates. The compact includes "implementing a standard four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate," efforts to improve data collection and evaluation, and annual progress reports "on the improvement of their state high school graduation, completion and dropout rate data."

Hawaii is a signatory to the pact. Puerto Rico and a dozen groups, including the Education Commission of the States (ECS) and the Educational Testing Service (ETS) also signed. California, Texas, Florida, Maryland, and Wyoming did not sign the pact.

In a related release on June 22 of this year, ETS announced the results of a survey showing Americans believed that high schools are not challenging students enough to equip them for the global economy. Survey results revealed adults desired teachers to be experts in their subjects, the No Child Left Behind reforms extended to high schools, and a statewide graduation test created. The survey also finds 80% of adults agree we should "increase teacher salaries to hire and retain more well-qualified teachers even if it means increased taxes."

Ready for the Real World? Americans Speak on High School Reform
Executive Summary
(available in PDF, 51K)
PowerPoint Presentation
(available in PDF, 174K)
From ETS

Graduation Counts: A Compact on State High School Graduation Data
(available in PDF, 194K, from NGA)

See also, Graduation Counts: A Report of the NGA Task Force on State High School Graduation Data
(available in PDF, 1.1M, from NGA)

and a related First Reading posting here.