Nearly 7,000 students drop out of the nation's public high schools each school day, and 3,000 of them are in the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) states. Altogether, an estimated 1.3 million teenagers in the United States abandon high school each year without earning a diploma. In 1,700 of the nation's high schools, less than 60 percent of students even make it to their senior year on time. The National Center for Education Statistics reports that 27 percent of America's Class of 2006 failed to graduate with their peers. How can state policies take powerful steps to reverse this trend? Based on the work of the SREB Committee to Improve High School Graduation Rates and Achievement, the 10 principles presented in this major SREB report provide a blueprint for high school reform to guide the next generation of school accountability in SREB states--giving equal priority to improving both graduation rates and achievement. (Contains 4 footnotes.)