In the 2007 edition of "Diplomas Count", "Education Week" reported that nationally more than one-third of the students lost from the high school pipeline fail to make the transition from the ninth to the 10th grade. This explains why, for more than two decades, schools and districts across the country have struggled to develop freshman transition activities and courses to address this critical transitional time for students. Unfortunately, many of these efforts have failed to impact school retention because there has been no plan, no roadmap, no guidelines or standards to point the way to success. Teachers are left to their own devices to develop from scratch what should be a rigorous, comprehensive course. In far too many cases, due to lack of resources (i.e., time, money and energy), the outcome does not meet expectations and, eventually, the program is abandoned. It was this realization and the resulting "Course Standards for Freshman Transition Classes" that launched the Freshman Transition Initiative of George Washington University in 2004. In developing the necessary standards, the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) for Career Connections and Career Investigation became the starting point to design the framework for this eighth- or ninth-grade course because they were among the best career exploration standards. It was also clear that in order to achieve the ambitious goal of impacting school retention, the new standards had to go beyond traditional career exploration. Working on the premise that individuals don't work hard until they understand the benefits of their efforts, the "Course Standards for Freshman Transition Classes" serve as the blueprint for well-designed freshman courses that not only carry the same rigor, credibility and status of traditional academic courses, but that also increase school retention, academic achievement, and postsecondary matriculation.