Plan Offered on U.S. Aid for High Schools

Principals’ Group Has Pricey Agenda, But More Tests Not on It

The National Association of Secondary School Principals has outlined a detailed, and expensive, agenda for ways the federal government can help improve high schools—from dramatically boosting federal aid for adolescent literacy to establishing a big, flexible spending pot to help low-performing high school students.

While some of the agenda has echoes, if much costlier ones, of President Bush’s plans for high schools, notably absent is any support for his call to mandate more testing in the high school grades.

In all, the plan issued by the Reston, Va.-based NASSP would involve about $5 billion annually in new federal spending for high schools. The group notes that high schools currently receive less federal aid than middle schools and far...