There are a number of ways to increase high school graduation rates and put more students on the path to and through college. Most states are trying to do so by increasing the academic rigor of all their high schools. A first line of attack is to boost the academic requirements for high school graduation. Fifteen states are instituting a core curriculum that ensures that the default pathway through high school is a college preparatory sequence (American Diploma Project, 2007).Moreover, a substantial number of states are aligning high school graduation standards with the standards required to advance directly into nonremedial, college-level work. For example, thirty states are at work on such alignment through Achieve's American Diploma Project Network (2007), and other states are engaged in aligning standards themselves. Some states use tenth-or eleventh-grade assessments to provide students with information about their readiness for college. And some states and school districts are mounting programs to recover high school dropouts and students who fall behind in earning credits: these students too need intensive academic work to meet the more rigorous standards required to complete high school and succeed in a community college.An emerging body of research and practice suggests that providing college-level work in high school is one promising way to better prepare a wide range of young people for college success, including those who do 43 4

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not only are Americans living longer than in decades past (xu, 2016), but they are also participating in the greatest transfer of wealth in history. researchers from Boston College estimated that almost $59 trillion will be transferred through estates between 2007 and 2061(Havens & schervish, 2014. Approximately $36 trillion will be inherited, and the rest will go to estate taxes, charities, and estate closing costs. exact numbers vary depending on who is doing the research, but the fact remains that a tremendous amount of wealth is changing hands through inheritance, either at death or inter vivos ("between the living"). Lawsuits challenging the validity of new or amended wills will become more common because testamentary capacity is the most frequently litigated type of capacity (American Bar Association [ABA] Commission on Law & American Psychological Association [APA], 2008). However, many psychologists lack the training and skills required to perform these evaluations (shulman, Peisah, Jacoby, Heinik, & Finkel, 2009).tHe Assessment oF testAmentAry CAPACity And UndUe inFLUenCe in tHe oLder AdULt nAnCy HoFFmAn the test is not whether the testator did the best or the wisest or the theoretically just thing in his will; but did he have sufficient active memory to collect his mind and comprehend, without prompting, the condition of his property, his relations to his children and other persons who might properly be his beneficiaries, and the scope and bearing of his will, and to hold these things in his mind a sufficient length of time to perceive their obvious relations to each other, and be able to form some rational judgment in relation to them. A person who has mental power to understand and transact ordinary business has capacity to make a valid will.-dunnell (1922, p. 94)

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For many students the first year of college begins before high school ends. This reality is requiring that educators rethink their traditional notions of the first year.