The study reviewed in this brief provides insight into how teachers and administrators in American public high schools are influenced by and attempt to address the problems posed by standards-based state accountability systems. The analysis builds upon earlier studies that used smaller and less representative samples of secondary schools, sometimes agreeing with and sometimes challenging their conclusions about the effects of increased accountability and high schools. The study examined how 48 low-performing high schools located in 34 school districts across six states responded to state accountability policies. The six states included those with strong (California, Florida, New York, and North Carolina) and weak (Michigan and Pennsylvania) accountability systems in place in 2002-2003, the time of our fieldwork and the year preceding the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). The results on state assessments were below average in all of the schools in the study. [The research reported in this brief was conducted by The Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) and funded by the Institute of Education Sciences. For the full report of this study, see ED493112.]