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Seventeen states will share $5.2 million in private money in the second phase of the National Governors Association’s efforts to improve high schools. States as diverse as Florida and Nevada

will work to increase the rigor of high school coursework, improve collaboration between precollegiate and higher education, and pursue other initiatives under the grants, scheduled to be

announced this week. The privately funded grants are the second round that the NGA has made since it convened a summit of governors, business leaders, and education experts in February to

map out a 10-point strategy for high school improvement. The new grants differ from the first round because they “focus on discrete strategies” for improving high schools rather than

long-range agendas for change, said Kristin Conklin, an education program director for the governors’ association. The two-year grants are being underwritten by seven private and corporate

foundations and are designed to support strategies that summit leaders endorsed, she added. In Wisconsin, for example, the governor’s office will use its $500,000 grant to expand access to

Advanced Placement courses in the 24,700-student Madison school system and eight rural districts with no or limited AP course offerings, said Ann Lupardus, a spokeswoman for Gov. James E.

Doyle, a Democrat. The grant will supplement the state’s current program to spread the AP program to the Wisconsin high schools that don’t have it, Ms. Lupardus said. The state is scheduled

to spend $100,000 a year in the current and coming school years on AP expansion, she said. Expanding access to AP courses is one of the 10 specific actions recommended in a report that

emerged out of the two-day summit focused on raising the caliber of high schools. The NGA sponsored the Washington gathering with Achieve Inc., a group of governors and business leaders that

promotes school improvement. (“Summit Underscores Gates Foundation’s Emergence as Player”, March 9, 2005.) All of the grant recipients in this second round of grantmaking will use the money

to pursue one or more of those tactics. IMMEDIATE IMPACT This past summer, the NGA distributed $20 million to 10 states to identify the combination of policies they will use in the

long-term effort to improve their high schools. Those grants, which also are for two years, will help those states “identify 10-year stretch goals” and begin making the policy changes

necessary to meet them, said Dane Linn, the NGA’s education policy director. Indiana, for example, is using its grant from that first round to make progress toward its goal of redesigning

half its high schools to emphasize mathematics and science. STATE GRANT WINNERS The National Governors Association is awarding privately funded grants totaling $5.2 million to 17 states to

help them pursue projects seen as improving their high schools in the near term. INCREASE RIGOR OF COURSEWORK Mississipi Oklahoma Pennsylvania EXPAND ADVANCED PLACEMENT Alabama Georgia

Kentucky Maine Nevada Wisconsin IMPROVE TEACHER QUALITY Iowa Connecticut Oklahoma Wyoming HELP LOW-PERFORMING SCHOOLS Nevada New Hampshire STUDY GOVERNANCE Arizona Georgia Florida* Oklahoma

Wyoming Connecticut EXPAND VIRTUAL LEARNING Georgia North Carolina Kentucky Tennessee BUILD DATA SYSTEMS Kentucky Nevada *Pending governor’s action SOURCE: National Governors Association By

contrast, the second-round recipients will use the money to achieve more-immediate objectives, such as putting AP programs in Wisconsin high schools that need them. Alabama, Georgia,

Kentucky, Maine, and Nevada also will expand AP programs. Each of those states will receive $500,000 and be required to match that amount with its own money. Mississippi, Oklahoma, and

Pennsylvania each will receive $140,000 for efforts to increase the rigor of courses across the high school curriculum. Each state must match that amount. WHOLE NEED NOT MET Even though the

second-round grants focus on relatively small-scale projects, the money they provide typically falls short of what is needed to complete the initiatives. Through the course of the two-year

effort to expand AP, for instance, those states may identify districts where they next want to bring the program, said Ms. Conklin of the NGA. And Kentucky and Nevada—which will each receive

$150,000 toward building a comprehensive student-data system—will need to supplement the grant money with state and federal funds to complete the job, Mr. Linn said. “This will help move it

along a little further,” he said. With both rounds of grantmaking completed, 26 states have received money to address high school issues. Maine is the only state to win grants in both

rounds. “The level of activity across these states will put pressure on states where we’re not seeing a lot of activity,” Mr. Linn said. The second round of grants is underwritten by the

BellSouth Foundation, the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, the GE Foundation, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the Lumina Foundation for Education, the Prudential Foundation, and

the State Farm Cos. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation financed the first rounds of grants. The NGA will be evaluating the success of the first two rounds of grants and will decide

later whether it will seek financing for another set of grants, Ms. Conklin said.