States seeking to prepare all high school graduates for college and careers need a strategy for responding to their lowest-performing high schools, which are responsible for a disproportionate number of students who drop out or graduate unprepared for what's ahead. Continuing to rely upon incremental change strategies will not lead to effective change in these schools. Instead, states need to build capacity to undertake dramatic improvement in these schools via turnarounds and fresh starts. At the same time, many individual students in better performing high schools do not graduate ready for college and careers. As a result, a complete state strategy must identify and segment schools by level of under-performance and mobilize different interventions to match each school's circumstances so that all students--no matter where they go to school--can graduate prepared for success in college and careers. This paper provides guidance for states about putting in place powerful ways of addressing chronically struggling schools as part of any Race to the Top (RTTT) application while also addressing the broader imperative to help all of a state's schools prepare students for college and careers. (Contains 2 tables and 22 endnotes.)