The American Youth Policy Forum, the National Conference of State Legislatures and the National Governors Association held a "fact finding" trip earlier this month, in Little Rock, Ark., featuring substantive policy discussions about high school reform issues and offering visits to redesigned high schools. The trip accomplished its three main goals:

• Exposing state policy leaders to effective programs, schools and districts so that they take away concrete, practical lessons;
• Providing time for participants to learn about successful policies and interventions that support high school redesign and to discuss various approaches to complex and difficult problems; and
• Encouraging state policy leaders to benchmark their high school redesign efforts, sharing lessons learned (both positive and negative) and to build a network of information, resources and contacts.

Central to the event was a briefing on Arkansas's Advanced Placement legislation. In 2005, Arkansas expanded its already robust Advanced Placement program and included pre-Advanced Placement courses. This expansion considers the benefits students gain by taking AP® courses and exams, the AP Course Audit process, the Pre-AP Program and, perhaps most important, the essential components of a comprehensive state AP policy and how these components are implemented. Arkansas is the only state to have addressed each component of the Comprehensive State AP Policy, as outlined by the Education Commission of the States.

The two-day professional development activity was designed for state legislators, members of governors' staffs and senior state officials from all over the country who work in K-16 education. Funding was made possible through a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.