Four large California school districts-Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, and Oakland-recently adopted ambitious new graduation standards designed to increase college readiness. Evidence from San Diego indicates a need for major interventions to help students succeed under the new policies. In conjunction with this report, the authors developed the a-g On Track Model, which can help districts identify middle-school students who will have difficulty completing the new requirements.

This research was supported with funding from the Donald Bren Foundation.